Making a Mint

At Kencraft Candy, canes start their lives

as 60 pounds of corn syrup, 70 pounds of sugar,

and one and a half gallons of water,

simmering in a vacuum cooker.

Flavors like peppermint, cranberry, or hot chocolate

are quickly folded in by hand.

Next, the cooks throw the batch into the puller.

After several minutes of stretching and folding,

the syrupy glob turns white

and is the texture of a hot marshmallow.

Cooks arrange sticky strips of warm, colored candy

into striped patterns.

They shape the white candy into a log

and stick the stripes to its sides.

Then, the enormous block of candy is plopped

into the batch roller, and travels through a series

of sizing wheels that reduce it to edible dimensions.

A trip through the twist belt twirls the stripes

around the white cane.

Left intact, the candy rope would stretch 1,500 feet,

but a cutting wheel chops into 11-inch sticks,

perfect for shrink-wrapping.

Kencraft bends all of its candy canes by hand,

using cane-shaped molds.

It takes about one hour to turn a 115-pound batch

into 1,600 candy canes.

Employees, like head-cook Tyson Blanco, taste a cane

from each batch, to make sure the flavor, color,

and texture meet Kencraft standards.

At the height of the pre-Christmas season,

the Kencraft factory turns out 16,000 candy canes per day.