If you have been following this blog at all, you know I love stuff made locally, and the more hands-on things become the better. Therefore, when I found out one of the local chocolate shops, Laughing Moon Chocolates, holds candy cane demonstrations where kids can not only see how the candy canes are made but shape their own, we loaded the family in the car and headed to Stowe (I am going to apologize for the quality of some of the pictures, we had to move around a bit and didn't always have the best picture taking spot, but it is a pretty cool process).
To start off, they take the the melted sugar and corn syrup and dump it back and forth between two big buttered trays until it has a nice gooey consistency.
Then, (this is the cool part) they put it on this hook and stretched it out so the air can get in and turn the candy white(The girls that work in this place have amazing shoulders). This was Little Man's (and the bigger man in the family as well) favorite part, and I thought he was going to jump right off my shoulders and go help the lady. The older woman next to us was very amused by his running commentary during this process. Up to this point, I had assumed the gloves were so their hands would not get sticky, but at this point in the process the candy is so hot, that not only to they have to wear the gloves, they have to keep rotating the person who is stretching out syrupy mess, because of the heat.
After that, it is brought back to these heating lamps where color is added and it is twisted into a cylinder shape, which is clipped and handed off to eager children and adults.
Little Man was so excited about shaping his own candy cane.
Five minutes later we had a nicely wrapped candy cane to take home. Unfortunately, it was dropped on the way out the door which resulted in a minor moment of emotional trauma.
That is until he realized he could eat some of the broken pieces!
Eating the candy resulted in the need to run around the back yard before lunch and work some of the sugar out of his system.
Thank God for nap time, I'm exhausted.
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