ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 22, 1996 TAG: 9612230120
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: MOUND HOUSE, NEV.
SOURCE: TOM GARDNER ASSOCIATED PRESS
The ubiquitous candy cane.
It's a last-minute Christmas time impulse item at the checkout stand. It's one thing you still might get for nothing at a bank. It's as much a decoration as a treat. Often, it's pretty much ignored.
Not at the Chocolate Nugget Candy Factory. Here, the red-and-white pole is a unique work of art, a tribute to the company's founder and a handmade trifle customers clamor for at this time of year.
``People pick out the right stripes, the right hook,'' owner Caroline Salzwimmer said. ``You'd think they were buying a car.''
Candy canes were the genesis of this family owned company.
Salzwimmer's father-in-law Frank, now 86, was a teen-ager in Akron, Ohio, in the Depression. The oldest of a recently orphaned brood, the job of providing for his siblings fell to him. So he sent away for a mail order candy cane kit.
Making the canes remains a fairly low-tech process. It looks easy when Chocolate Nugget employee Charlie Ouderkirk does it - but he's had five years to perfect it.
Ten pounds of sugar and 10 pounds of corn syrup go into a kettle, which is placed on an open gas flame. Two quarts of water are added, and 30 minutes later, the amber-colored mixture is bubbling at a temperature between 260 and 300 degrees Fahrenheit.
The kettle is emptied onto a steel table. Ouderkirk measures 10 milliliters of peppermint oil into the candy.
As the room fills with the smell of peppermint and Ouderkirk's eyes water, he uses a large scraper to fold the still bubbling mixture from a strip about 5 feet long and 18 inches wide into an amber pillow.
Caroline Salzwimmer mixes red food dye into a fifth of the mixture, while Ouderkirk and co-worker Rod Bull take the rest to an 8-inch hook jutting from the wall. They take turns pulling it, wrapping it back around the hook, then pulling it again - a physically demanding process that turns the amber compound into a familiar white as air blends in.
Finally, the red and white mixtures are combined and placed on a 6-inch-wide, 10-foot-long canvas conveyer belt heated by gas flames. As the candy blob turns on the narrow strip, it lenghtens and thins. Ouderkirk snips the candy into into foot-long pieces.
Bull and Salzwimmer roll the pieces until they're cool enough that they won't flatten once they're placed on a cookie sheet, but still are warm enough to bend into shape.
Frank Salzwimmer's recipes not only are followed to the letter, they are hand-printed on the 5-by-8 cards in a plastic holder just above the scales where Ouderkirk metes out his ingredients.
LENGTH: Medium: 56 linesby CNB