Tasty Twists: How Candy Canes Are Made

Every year, Americans eat almost two billion candy canes! The bright, twisted stripes of color come in flavors that range from peppermint to cotton candy to apple pie. They are a favorite treat of the holiday season.

But how do candy canes get made? And who makes them?

Mixing, Heating, and Cooling

Hammond’s Candies was founded in Denver, Colorado, over 100 years ago. They’ve been making and selling candy canes ever since.

Lori Schuman is the Vice President of Marketing at Hammond’s Candies, and she knows every step of the process.

“It starts,” she says, “with a copper kettle. We use copper because it distributes the heat evenly without leaving any burn marks or discoloring the candy.”

At this point, water, corn syrup, and sugar are combined in the kettle. Flavorings and color will be added later. First, the mixture has to be heated to 325° Fahrenheit — that’s about the same temperature cookies are baked at in an oven. They keep stirring the mixture while it heats up. Once the mixture is hot enough, Schuman says, it takes “two cooks to lift the kettle and pour it on a cooling table.”

Pipes run from the ceiling to the table, and hot and cold water is pushed through the pipes under the cooling table. The cook can use the hot and cold water to control the temperature of the table and adjust how fast or slow the slab of candy cools down. It has to stay warm — but not too hot — so that color and flavor can be added.

Flavoring, Pulling, and Wrapping

After the color and flavor are added, the candy, which is still in one large chunk, is moved to a pulling machine. “This machine stretches it and pulls the candy while adding air to the candy,” says Schuman.

Once the candy is flavored, colored, and pulled, the cooks move it to the blocking table. “This is where they can make all of the striping patterns for the wrapper of the cane,” says Schuman. For Hammond’s candy canes, the candy is made of two parts: a stripe on the outside and solid filling on the inside.

Making these batches of candy requires a lot of muscle. Each center of solid filling can weigh 60 to 70 pounds. By the time the striped wrapper is added, the whole block of candy weighs 80 to 100 pounds!

Finally, a Candy Cane

From the blocking table, the cooks move the candy to a batch roller, which helps keep the candy soft while also making the candy into a cylinder shape. “The kitchen is probably about 90 degrees,” says Schuman, “so it’s really hot in there!” The hot air helps keep the candy soft, too.

After the batch roller, the rest of the process is done by hand. Cooks individually cut the candy to the right length. They use special scissors to seal the candy. “The scissors that we use weigh about two pounds and have to be sharpened weekly,” Schuman says. Then, with white gloves, the cooks shape the candy into the “cane” shape. It takes about 30 seconds for the candy to harden, and then the candy cane is ready to be eaten!

Six hundred candy canes can be made from a single 100-pound block of candy. By the end of the year, cooks at Hammond’s Candies make as many as 15 million candy canes in 30 different flavors.

Worth the Wait

Making candy canes is complicated. It’s not just a matter of mixing the right ingredients. It takes experience to know how to pull the candy and recognize when it’s ready to be shaped.

“One cook stays with their batch of candy from start to finish,” says Schuman. It takes a cook about two years to learn the whole process.

“It’s much harder than it looks!” she says. But it’s worth the hard work according to Schuman. “It’s fun seeing how the ingredients can turn into such a beautiful candy.”