Dec 16, 2012

Warm Candy Canes Please!

I am not going to teach you how to make candy canes in this post but I had the chance to watch the candy cane making process and it was pretty neat. There is a local candy store that was featured on the news the other morning and ever since then I was kind of curious about it. I had never been there before and did not even know where the store was located.Yesterday I just happened to drive past the store by chance.  There was a huge crowd outside of the store peering into the window and I immediately knew what was going on. Once I saw the name of the store I knew that they were making candy canes and had to stop to see it. We parked the car and hurried over to watch!
We watched the first part through the window from the outside of the store since it was pretty crowded inside. We didn't get to see the process from the very beginning but walked up right when they he was preparing the gooey stuff. 
It was amazing to watch the process and man is it a lot of work! The candy turns white just from being stretched by a hook on the wall. You could actually see the candy turning from yellow to white within a few minutes time.
The red part is obviously from food coloring but still took a lot of work to mix it all in and get it to the right shade of red.
A very small amount of the flavoring is added since it costs $600.00 per gallon! Once the flavoring was added, you could smell it throughout the shop and outside of the shop too!
The shop is family owned and operated and they work an amazing little assembly line to get the candy canes made. These people have the process down perfectly!
Once the candy canes were made, everyone received a sample. They used this machine that cut the candy into little sample sized pieces. The candy cane samples were still warm and I have to tell you that warm candy canes taste so good!
For a $1.35, you can also bend your own candy cane but you have about 15 seconds to bend it before the candy hardens. My son decided to bend his own but I am not quite sure what the shape of his was. He said it was just a circle :)
It a really fun experience for kids and adults too. It did not cost a thing to watch so that was also  a plus. I think I was more WOW'd by it than my son was.

Have you ever watched how candy canes are made? Have you ever experienced a warm candy cane? 

3 comments:

  1. That is so neat! I just heard the story of the original candy cane yesterday. This weekend has been full of candy cane knowledge.

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  2. That's cool!!! I've never tasted a warm candy cane but I can see how it would be great!! My sister made them this year...she is much braver than me!

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  3. Great experience. I have only ever seen this process on TV, so it would be interesting to see it in person. It is crazy how hard candy starts out!

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