A Guide to Professional Grade Candy Making
This guide will teach you how to create professional grade candy from top to bottom – choosing the right tools, sourcing quality ingredients, a brief introduction to the chemistry of sugar crystallization, the steps to produce the candy itself, packaging, and ingredient and allergen labeling. Making candy is fun and rewarding, and this guide will help you make the best possible product.
PART 1: THE MYTHOLOGY OF PEANUT BRITTLE
I love food mythology. Being a northwest kid, I grew up on tales of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. I was enthralled with the smaller foodie details of these tales. I wondered: How did you go about feeding someone the size of Paul? What about Babe? How could these people manage to do it?
My favorite detail of Paul Bunyan’s mythology was the pancakes made for Paul at the lumberjack camp. They were said to be so large people strapped huge pats of butter to their feet and skated around to butter them. It sounded so fantastical, tasty, and funny to my child’s brain.
Most native-born Americans know some Tall Tales, like the famous stories of Paul Bunyan, John Henry, Pecos Bill, Johnny Appleseed, Davy Crockett, and others. But have you ever heard of Paul Bunyan’s cousin, Tony Beaver? I hadn’t until I looked into the origin story of one of my favorite confections to make, peanut brittle.
Tony Beaver is said to have been one of Paul Bunyan’s cousins. Tony was a lumberjack, like Paul. Tony farmed gigantic peanuts, among other crops, on top of his lumber felling-prowess. When Tony found that his oversized peanuts were too big for the average person to want to eat, he was very disappointed. But he stored them in his barn, refusing to give up on the hope of a prosperous use for them in the future.
As the story goes, when a torrential flood threatened his West Virginian village, Tony sprung into action. He enlisted the townsfolk to shell the oversized peanuts, and throw them into the river with great amounts of molasses. The churning of the water, molasses, and peanuts was said to have hardened the river where it stood. The hardened river stopped the flooding, saving the village.
The next morning, the villagers were faced with a new challenge. The huge, hardened mass blocked the river, which also happened to be the village’s drinking water. After a moment of thought, Tony chipped away at the mass, took a bite, and peanut brittle was created. He passed around chunks to all the villagers and they freed the drinking water.
Peanut brittle is produced all over the world. In the United States, word of mouth tells us that perhaps instead it was a simple mistake that created this now-traditional treat. The story goes that a West Virginian woman in the 1890s (though some cookbooks claim as late as 1960) was making candy – some stories say taffy, some say caramel – and instead of grabbing the cream of tartar, she mistakenly grabbed baking soda, and voila! Crispy, buttery, peanut brittle was born.
