MADE BY HAND
All of our candies
are truly artisan candies.
Each is carefully made by hand. We measure and mix our recipe
in oversized stock pots, heating until a clear, thick syrup
is formed. Pouring is done in small batches using old fashioned
tea kettles (which are no longer made, so if you know of any
of these Wearever tea kettles in good condition, please let
us know, as at some-point I expect the ones we have will wear
out). These small tea kettles (or batches) are precisely heated
to 300° F. This is where we use our most modern piece of
equipment, a digital thermometer. It is extremely helpful to
have such an accurate gage for temperature as barely candy is
quite temperamental. A few degrees too low and you make taffy,
and a few degrees over and it's burnt. Each mold is skillfully
filled with hot Barley Candy syrup. (Most modern plastic molds
will not stand up to such constant high temperatures, which
one of the reasons why we prefer to work with our antiques.)
The candies are allowed to cool, thicken and then set until
they are almost cold. Each one must be removed when it is still
slightly warm and a little bit flexible. If a candy is allowed
to become cold in it's mold it can "freeze" in and
become quite difficult to get out. Once the candies are out
of their molds we spread them over the marble covered table
top to cool completely. After they have cooled, They are moved
to our climate controled packing room where we check each one
for imperfections. Using fine jewelers files we remove any over-pour
or sharp edges and ensure each piece is perfectly formed. Each
candy is then individually wrapped and labeled, then sorted
and packaged in gift sets of twelve. In many styles there are
far more than twelve shapes in the selected style (for example,
there are now more than 70 different shapes in our Christmas
selection) and we offer far more than twelve flavors. If you
order more than one box of a style, the assortments will vary,
in shape and flavor. More often than not we are making your
candies ecpecially for you. We have all of these wonderful molds,
and have worked very hard to find the best all natural flavors
available. Our goal is to send you the best, most interesting
and most delicious assortments we can.
