Candy Cane Chronicles
A story of striped sweets, by hook or by crook
There are 1.76 billion candy canes sold in the United States each year, with 90% being sold between Thanksgiving and Christmas. They are, in fact, the number one candy sold in the month of December, particularly in the second week of the month when Americans festoon their trees with the crooked confection.
Pulled sugar sticks—made by heating sugar, water and a few other ingredients to a boil, then cooling and drawing the sticky mixture into a rope—were a popular sweet in the 17th century, the era in which the candy cane was likely invented. The origin of the candy cane is generally thought to be in Germany in 1670: a choirmaster at the Cologne Cathedral, hoping to keep the kids in the church audience and/or choir quiet, enlisted the aid of a local candy maker to make treats that would occupy the youngsters during a Christmas Eve performance. The story goes that in order to justify giving children sweets in church, the choirmaster devised a tie-in theme to his “living crèche” performance and so he requested that the sticks be given a hook-shape to emulate shepherds’ crooks. However, it might be just as likely that the treats were shaped in their familiar hook shape as a way to hang them from trees—it was a common practice to hang sweets such as cookies on Christmas trees for 16th century Germans.
Whatever the origin of the crook-shaped delight, as word of the German tradition spread throughout Europe, so did the practice of giving out candy canes as a Christmastime treat to accompany nativity plays. But the now-familiar red-and-white decoration came later. When the candy cane was introduced to the US in 1847 in Wooster, Ohio by August Imgard, a German-Swedish immigrant, candy canes were still all white. The red stripes were added in the mid- to late-1800’s, coinciding with the popularity of barber-striped poles and likely the invention of enterprising merchants hoping to make their products more attractive to window-shopping children and their parents.
The traditional method of pulling sugar sticks required hand rolling the candy on a hard surface to keep the cylindrical shape. This made the steps for cutting and adding the classic hook end required for candy canes difficult. The breakage rate was about 20% for hand-pulled canes. This problem was rectified in 1919 by the brother-in-law of confectioner and owner of the Famous Candy Company, Robert McCormac of Albany, GA in 1919: Gregory Harding Keller created an automated process for twisting the spiral design into the candy and cutting the sugar sticks into precise lengths. A modernized version of the Keller Machine (as it was patented) is still in use today, and adds the step of wrapping the candies after they are cut.
The largest candy cane ever made was in December 2022. Chef Alain Roby in Geneva, Illinois created a cane 51 feet long. Roby needed 900 pounds of sugar to complete the commanding confectionary chart-buster, and he used a blow-torch to melt on the cane’s decorative flourishes. The cane was made in four- to eight-foot segments, each rolled by hand, and took about three weeks to complete. This was Roby’s third world-record confection: he also created the world’s tallest crooked sugar building (at an impressive 12 feet, 10 inches) and the world’s largest chocolate sculpture (20 feet, 8 inches).
True Treats: The Candy Cane - Details Revealed
History.com: Who Invented Candy Canes?
Thank you. No need to tell ya', but will. I am a trivia fan.
Striped goodness after the post of striped baddies? (Skunks)