Thanks for the chuckle and the link, Craig.

Craig Howard comments on many things Buffalo and a lot more on his blog “the view from America’s North Coast“

Little did we know in the mid to late 1970’s when we were living in Germany and eating all those quite decent German, Swiss and Belgium chocolates that we were going to be making chocolates professionally in the future. We have used that European casual tasting along with a serious study of the industry and tasting of our domestic chocolates to determine what we prefer. There are quite a few very decent domestic chocolates available to today’s candy maker and consumer. Wikipedia also has a nice overview of chocolate topics and it’s not a bad start to becoming more informed about chocolate. Of course the next step would be seeking out the better chocolates and begin tasting.

We’ve chosen Wilbur Chocolate of Lititz, PA for our chocolate supplier. Twenty-five to thirty years after living in Europe and eating their chocolate, we find that the quality of all fine chocolates in Europe and North America is even better by far. Where before there may have been a quality gap in objective parameters, now the difference between quality chocolates is solely subjective, literally a matter of taste. And this is where the candy maker’s preferences and skill becomes important for it is the candy maker that works hard to create the piece that presents the flavors and textures to their best advantage. We use Wilbur’s Cashmere and Sable for our milk chocolate Sponge Candy and Wilbur’s Brandywine for our dark chocolate Sponge Candy.

Want to know even more about chocolate? The Field Museum of Chicago has but together a wonderful traveling exhibition and translated it into a very visual, interactive web site. After viewing the site, the next step would be to seek out the better chocolates and taste some more. It’s a tough assignment, but someone has to do it!

There’s a whole lot going on under the hood that you will appreciate more if you read lots of blogs using different types of software. Plus there are a lot of features in the backend that will allow me to fit posting into whatever small bits of time I find myself with. After all, candy making comes first!

Sandy is excited about the new blog and how user friendly it is, both for reading and for posting. She has already made her first post and she intends to blog her garden.

For those interested in the technical details, this site runs on WordPress. I’ve been watching WordPress development for over two years and I’ve always been impressed but I haven’t been able to make the leap to anything near as customized as I wanted. And that’s where a WordPress Business Consultant comes in. Michael Pollack of SoloStream.com took my static page website and quickly produced a business weblog site with many of my ideas incorporated. Some of my ideas went by the wayside as we went along but I like to think that’s because of his quiet good advice coupled with my good sense.8) The project took the best part of a week from start to finish. Michael did some initial work and gave me time to digest it. Then we had a very productive conference call that ran about an hour. After that the work went full steam ahead until completion. Minor design changes and problems were tidied up and we were done. Several problems that cropped up later were fixed right away. If only Candy making would go so smoothly. I used just a few of Michael’s services on this project but I tried to take full advantage of his understanding of how WordPress can work as a small business web publishing platform.

Anyway, feel free to give me any feedback in comments about the new SpongeCandy.com.

I start the cook with a measured amount of water in a 20 inch copper kettle. The candy stove’s btu output is unknown since it is older than I am but there are dozens of gas nozzles streaming 3 inch jets of flame. It cost about 10 cents a minute for the natural gas to run the stove 15 years ago. I don’t really want to know what it costs now.

The corn syrup has already been added. Old-time candymakers referred to this as “glue”, short for glucose but more descriptive of it’s stickiness. Today it is commonly refered to in the industry as corn sweetener. Shown is a measured amount of sugar being added.

An occasional quick stir with the paddle prevents scorching while the sugar dissolves. The paddle is made from maple, a hard, tough wood. Even so, I used to wear away inches of paddle while stirring various candies over the course of a decade. Now when constant stirring is required I have equipment that does it.

The ingredients for the syrup are totally mixed and have come to a rolling boil. The boil will self-stir the syrup through out the rest of the cook. When the syrup has reached the soft crack stage, it is removed from the stove to cool. I use a thermometer which is much more accurate than water testing the syrup stage. For some candies, a thermometer isn’t accurate enough and the concentration of sugar has to be measured with a refractometer.

The cooked syrup is stirred to cool before any further ingredients are added. It’s not a constant stirring because I’m usually busy preparing for pouring the batch or preparing for the next batch. The thermometer is closely monitored throughout the cooling process.

After the syrup has been cooled, Gelatin is stirred in. The reaction is dramatic when the gelatin begins to dissolve in the hot syrup, the water content flashes to steam. The lower hand on the paddle does feel the heat but it’s necessary to stir aggressively and that can’t be done with an upside-down baseball bat grip.

Still stirring the gelatin but with the steam flash and the rapid stirring of the batch, the paddle and my hand almost fade away in the picture. The purpose of the gelatin is to add “body” to the syrup (make more viscous). While you won’t often see this step in various home made recipes, this is a very necessary step when making very large batches of Sponge Candy.

Next, the baking soda is stirred in. There is an immediate reaction as the baking soda begins to release carbon dioxide and the bubbles are trapped in the viscous syrup. The color changes from a deep brown to a golden yellow. Stirring is very heavy work at this point but it is important to evenly mix the baking soda in.

The batch is immediately poured into the form because it is visibly rising in the kettle. The batch and kettle each weigh 45 pounds for a total of 90 pounds so pouring sponge always required two people until I got the kettle lifter mentioned in the first paragraph.

This picture illustrates just how heavy and sticky the hot sponge mass has become. Once the kettle is scraped into the form it has to be cleaned. Cleaning is done on the stove with steam using high heat, a small amount of water and a tight fitting lid. It takes a little less than 10 minutes to get everything cleaned up and ready to go again.

Meanwhile the sponge mass rises dramatically in the form, increasing in size by approximately four times over a two to three hour period and then will fall back a little and harden. Because of the massive size of the batch it will take at least 36 hours for the center of the batch to completely set and cool. This means I have to cook a batch at least two days before it can be cut and coated with chocolate.

I hope you enjoyed this brief tour or the candy kitchen while Sponge Candy was being cooked. Please feel free to make comments or ask questions in the comments below. To be continued in the future with the following posts:

Cutting the Sponge Candy center [future link]
Coating the Sponge Candy center [future link]

Please check back often!

We know a tremendous bunch of our Sponge Candy is sent out of South Buffalo every holiday (Thanksgiving, Christmas season, Valentine’s Day and Easter) by our customers to family, friends and business associates. There’s also a huge number of Buffalo Expats scattered about the country looking for a genuine taste of home, especially at those popular Buffalo parties. Then, let’s not forget the many Buffalophiles who have discovered Sponge Candy (among many other things) while on a visit here. And, finally, to our surprise we have come to the conclusion that a significant number of you out there are what we believe to be food adventurers. SpongeCandy.com is about serving all of of these distinct groups and any others, too.

Our secondary purpose in making this web site is to tell you a little bit more about our store - Ko-Ed Candies, our home and community - South Buffalo, and other things that we find interesting and hope that you do, too.

Although we haven’t posted any of those “under construction” signs about, there certainly are many holes in this web site for us to fill. If we missed something, please be patient with us. If it creates a problem, we’ll do all that we can to make it right - just as if you were standing at our counter. While we’re somewhat satisfied with this new eStore, there will be lots of improvements over time. Still, there’s no doubt we make candy better than we make websites.