A busy day

A busy day here in the mid-west. We went to a neighboring town for Sebastien's 3 month photo and afterwards, because I had read about them in the local paper, checked out a family-run confectionary business. They make their own candy canes and peanut brittle. We were able to watch the process from when the sugar hits the critical temperature, to the final produce - plus Alex was also able to "make her own cane" - well actually just shape the cooling candy into her own shape - but it was still pretty cool. Here are the photos we took:

It took a bit of work to find them - they were using a cafe that had recently closed. They brought out a copper bowl that had had the sugar being boiled in it - it had reached the critical temperature of somewhere over 300 degrees - and poured it out over a slab of marble to start to cool.




As they let it cool, they added the peppermint essence to it which created clouds of steam.







They spatula-ed the edges back into the middle until they were left with almost a lump instead of a puddle.







Then the man gathered it all up into a large cube, pulling off 2 quarters of the mix that were to have colours added to them (in this case green and red).






Then the man took the main part of the candy and "worked" it on a stainless steel hook. Apparently this starts a chemical reaction that canges its colour from caramel to white.









You can see the colour changes between the two photos. He the took it off the hook and shaped it into a cube on the marble slab.










Once they'd mixed in the colour pigments, and the candy looked really glossy and shiny, they added the coloured sections back to the white block - one on each side.






Then the man "cubed" the candy again and prepared it for the final stretching.







The man pulled a small section of it out from the cube, twisting it as he pulled. Then another man snipped it into sections and a woman rolled the sections to make them like a rope. Finally another woman shaped them into a cane and put them on metal trays to cool.




Alex sat back and intently watched the whole process - and I didn't get asked once "What's he doing?"










Here's Alex next to the table where I'd helped her push her "stick" into a shape...she wasn't really sure what it was all about.







Here's Alex with her finished product all bagged up to go.








Plus a "post game" interview here.