School kids invited to see sweet shop

by Philip A. Janquart
 Who doesn’t love walking into a candy shop?
 The shelves of Velvet Mints, bear claws and seafoam, and the smell of chocolate wafting through the air transports many of us back to a time when we were kids.
 On Thursday, Oct. 7, third graders from Pioneer Elementary were given the opportunity to make memories of their own, Weiser Classic Candy owner Patrick Nauman inviting the class to see how candy is made.
 “Some of my fondest memories of being a kid is going to the candy store; and how can you not foster that?” Nauman said.
 Walking to the back of the store, where “all the magic happens,” the kids’ eyes grew wide and attentive as they passed a table with dozens of candied apples, the light reflecting off the smooth caramel, their sticks pointed upright toward the ceiling like columns of dutiful soldiers.
 Next to the apples was a cooling batch of chocolate-covered pretzels and, on another table, round balls of crème candies waited on deck to be dipped in chocolate.
 “Patrick kindly invited the third graders,” said Pioneer Elementary teacher Alisha Horton. “They are going to see how everything works and then at the end, they’ll get a treat.”
 Nauman was almost immediately peppered with questions, starting with a gregarious youngster who asked him if he was the “Patrick” from the kids’ program “Sponge Bob.”
 “No, I’m not Patrick from Sponge Bob,” he said smiling, following up with an explanation of the various ingredients used.
 “We do all kinds of stuff here,” he said. “Everything we make is made from scratch and we use as much local stuff as we can, too, so our sugar is local, our apples for our caramel apples are local, our huckleberries for our huckleberry candies are local,” prompting another question from the group.
 “Do you make the apples?”
 “No, we buy our apples from a local growing company right outside of town,” he said.
 Another kid astutely asked the name of the company.
 “Brooke Orchards,” he revealed.
 All questions answered for the moment, Nauman began to explain the process.
 “We cook over gas, and we cook with these big copper pots, so this is kind of like mom’s stew pot, only supersized,” he told the kids. “We use copper because copper distributes heat more evenly and that way, we don’t have to worry about burning the candy because we don’t want to eat burnt candy, do we?
 “Noooooo!” the kids said in unison.
 Before he could continue, a statement of sorts was made.
 “My mom hates candy,” said one girl.
 “Your mother hates candy? Well, what are we going to do with your mother?” he chuckled.
Another question:
 “Are we going to get a treat?”
 “Well, it depends on whether you are good boys and girls,” he explained. “If you are good, I might be able to find a treat for you at the end of the tour.”
 “It looks soooo good!” said a boy named Gabe. “I’m so hungry.”
 Nauman began explaining the candy making process.
Another statement:
 “I’m thirsty.”
 “You’re Thirsty? Well, I’m Patrick, nice to meet you,” he said, garnering some giggling from the group.
 He continued, “Once we cook everything here, it then gets poured out on this big table, like you’ll see these chocolate-covered pretzels we just made over here. We mixed all these up after we melted the chocolate and poured them out on the table. We do that because the table is made of marble, so it’s nice and cool.
 “It pulls the heat out of the candy, so when we make batches of crème centers, or batches of fudge, we pour it out on the table because we need it to cool super-fast. If we didn’t do that, it would take about five hours for a batch of candy to cool and it would make it difficult for us to continue to process, but because we pour it out on this table, we get to move on to the next process in about 45 minutes.”
 Nauman said the cooling process allows his staff to make about 400 pounds of candy per day.
 The group responded with a unified, “Whoaaaaaa!”
 “So, once it’s cooled on the table, then we can take it to the mixer,” he continued as the group listened attentively. “It’s the same kind of mixer that your mom uses at home when she makes cupcakes or cookies, only ours is supersized, so we can process about 35 or 40 pounds of candy at a time with one of these mixers.
 “Once it’s mixed up, depending on what it is, for instance, with our crème centers, like our lemon crèmes and fruit crèmes, huckleberry crèmes, any of those, it comes over here to this machine,” he said pointing to a boxy-looking piece of equipment with a tray protruding from its face.

“We drop it in the top, we break it down, and down here is what we use to cut it off with and out pops the candy all ready to go, all the little round balls perfectly formed. You get about 1,200 pieces of candy out of every batch that we run.”
 The candy is then taken to another room where two women dip them in milk and dark chocolate.
 “I think it’s very cool and it’s going to taste good,” said a nine-year-old girl named Scarlet. “I just want plain chocolate and cookie dough. I love cookie dough.”
 At the conclusion of the tour, Nauman gave each smiling kid a caramel apple.
 “I tell my staff all the time that we are not in the business of selling candy, we are not in the business of selling sandwiches, we are in the business of making memories, so that’s what I want to do. It’s building those memories that hopefully will last them a lifetime,” he said.