The Art and Play of Candy - The Story

Holidays are not just times for friends and family together, but also a time of more baking and making from scratch. Somehow, these seasons of thanks and traditions call even the most die-hard processed food eater back to try a recipe remembered and treasured from childhood.

It is definitely the season for sweet treats from scratch. Cookies, cakes, candy and sugary delicacies that take extra effort and time are labored over and served or given as gifts with delight. Some people have a huge range of goodies they make.

I have just one, really. I make turtles - homemade caramel with hand-tempered and dipped chocolate over pecans or cashews - carrying on the tradition I learned from my mom.

Pull your chairs up to the fire, my friends, and let me tell you the tale of how someone who.does.not.like.sweets. became the torch-bearer for a family gastronomic tradition.

We did not always make turtles in my family. We made caramels, popcorn balls, fudge, peanut brittle and cookies of all sorts around the holidays.  But turtles didn't enter our lives until after one of the saddest days our family experienced.  My dad died unexpectedly at the age of 51 in September, 1971. Mom had been a homemaker and active volunteer, and coach, caregiver and general for us seven kids, three of whom were still at home when we lost Dad.

With no employable skills and mourning her sweetie, it was a tough few months. A family friend who owned a small candy shop asked Mom if she was up for helping during the busy holiday season. Mom was grateful for a chance to earn money for the family to supplement the life insurance and social security (dad worked at a factory so additional income was high priority to make ends meet). And so began our journey towards turtles.

Mom packed candy the first year she worked. The mad-house busy season for candy shops is October through Valentine's Day...sometimes extending to Easter. All hands on deck.

By the next year, the owners needed help hand tempering and dipping chocolate and so mom's apprenticeship began.  The Seroogy's tempered and dipped their chocolate the old-fashioned way - on marble, manipulating and smoothing the pool of chocolate back and forth by hand (muddy-gush!) over and over until it reached it's just right temperature to dip the candy in - too hot and the chocolate would be streaked with grey (the dreaded "charlie"); too cold and it "set up" in gnarly and ugly lumps, undippable.

Candy at mom's house in the 80's

Making candy with  Auntie Lu in the mid-80s

Within a year or two, in addition to the candy we traditionally made at the holidays, hand-dipped nuts and turtles were introduced into our holiday sweets-making repertoire.  By that time we older siblings were out of the house - married and starting families, in college, in jobs.  Mom invited us back for candy-making days that turned into parties with an aunt or cousin sometimes joining my sisters and me. I was hooked.

We would make two batches of caramels and wrap those 300-400 chewy tidbits and make two batches of caramel to make the 800 or so turtles plus chocolate covered nuts. It was an all day job - starting at 8 or 9 am and continuing through the day until the last turtles were cool and boxed at 8pm. We ate soup at lunch and one of us would pick-up a carry-out from Kroll's, a local burger joint, for supper.

Tempering by hand

Mom did all the tempering and dipping. We kids spread the nuts on the pans, used spoons to pour a quarter-size dollop of hot caramel onto the nuts and kept the double boiler full of melting chocolate so mom didn't have to pause in her dipping - we would just add more melted chocolate to her marble, while she held up one chocolate covered hand and announced with a laugh and a twinkle in her eye, "Nickle a lick!".

Her time at Seroogy's brought her to master level at tempering and dipping. Just by the feel of the chocolate cooling from hot to perfect, and the look of it dripping off her hand in thin strings told her when the velvety ooze was at the perfect dipping temperature.  She invited us all to try our hands but the temper and the delicate twists and manipulations eluded us apprentices and our efforts produced interesting shapes that tasted great but were not easy on the eye.

As the years went on and lives got busier, all my sisters couldn't make the candy-making day and our numbers dwindled.  Mom was getting older and we downsized batches to make the day more reasonable.  I began to temper and dip under mom's tutelage (I think I never missed a candy-making year so mom thought it was about time!).  With her encouragement, I went from apprentice to journeywoman over the thirty years we made chocolate.  In the last few years of her life, slowed by Parkinson's, my mom gave me the reins for all the dipping and I became the master under her careful eye.

And so my own candy journey began. In the next part, we'll leave the story and get down to the brass tacks of the process and recipe for turtle making!