Holiday Ribbon Candy

Marc Summers: During the holidays, you always need something to top off the candy dish and often you find them build with cotton rock and ribbon candy. So, let’s visit a sweet shop cooking up these creations and discover how they get their unique shapes.

Candy cane and gi8nger bread houses may signal the start of the holidays. But ribbon and cotton rock candy area also symbolic sweets reminding candy lovers that the highly celebrated season is just around the corner.

Mark Puch: They recognize these pieces saying that, “Oh I remember when I had those or this is at Christmas time, it must be the Christmas candy season.”

Mar Summers: Each year, the Primrose Candy Company in Chicago, Illinois string together roughly one and a half million pounds of this Christmas candy. And both the sweets, start celebrating in the company’s kitchen.

Mark Puch: We mix corn syrup and sugar. We blend that in a semi liquid quick stage. We then take that and pump into our cooking systems where we cook the candy to around 300 degrees.

Marc Summers: A cooling wheel then chills that sweets enough for coloring. With ribbons, the candy divided into two sections, one to color white and the other red eventually creating a candy can scheme. The white candy which comprises the bulk of the ribbon then heads to a kneading machine.

Mark Puch: As we mix the candy, we’re rotating the top through the middle of the candy and it's how the candy is mixed up and cool properly.

Marc Summers: The blanched batch is now ready for some red stripes.

Mark Puch: It will alternate those red stripes on either side of the batch. So, the batch when it comes out, you’ll see a white piece of candy with a red stripe.

Marc Summers: Next, the candy transports to a batch roller where the shaping wheels waddle the ribbon down to a rope. Then, in a hidden process the ribbons receive their ribs.

Mark Puch: It goes through the little crimpers and one or crimp goes through a kind of pushes it in a little indentation and keeps on alternating that little ribbon affect.

Marc Summers: A knife taps the candy in about every inch of a quarter creating a place where the candy will break. And when it comes to making ribbon candies cotton rock companion, there is some mystery involved.

Mark Puch: We’ve have some people writing and say ask about a settle bets and wanted to know how we paint for the design on each piece of cotton rock and how it’s made. People really have no clue how you get that design in it.

Marc Summers: The key is turning a clump of candy into a three dimensional treat.

Mark Puch: We make one wedge and then we make that actually about nine or 10-feet long. We then cook that one wedge into six pieces and put them all together.

Marc Summers: This will make up the inside of this lime themed candy. Next, the batch roller sizes the fruit to a long roof which snakes through a sixty-foot cooling line.

Mark Puch: At the end of the 16 feet, we have little knifes that come through in just kind of tap it.

Marc Summers: And the design is revealed. Now, both the cotton rock and ribbon candy can be found on the house during the holiday. But they can also be found on a certain sweet structure.

Mark Puch: And we have three or four different day quiz that will buy both the cotton rock and ribbon to use begin to those houses.