Making candy at home is an important part of many families’ holiday traditions. When people move to Park City, they often find their time-tested recipes don’t work at the high altitude, said Jane Toly, leisure learning coordinator for the Park City School District.
Toly said she tries to offer high-altitude baking classes twice a year in the community-education programs she organizes. A longtime fan of Steve Lund’s Village Candy Shoppe at 314 Main St., she asked him several years ago to teach candy-making tricks for cooks in Park City.
“It’s a good deal,” Toly said. “For $59 you take a lot of candy, recipes and knowledge home. You’re in their kitchen on Main Street cooking with the expert.”
This fall’s classes will be Oct. 14 with a three-hour morning session from 9 a.m. until noon and an afternoon session from 6 until 9 p.m. The cost is $59 and only six people are allowed in each session.
Making candy is pretty easy in the sense that you’re basically breaking down sugar crystals and restoring them the way you want whether that’s in a gooey, fluffy marshmallow or a sucker, he said. The difficulty comes in paying meticulous detail to the amount of heat applied to the mixture. The temperatures required for different recipes will change at various elevations.
Lund said he goes through the basics of chocolate and how to recognize good stuff, he teaches tempering so candies have a gloss instead of dullness or whiteness. Then they start working and make English toffee, homemade marshmallow, truffles, and if there’s time, caramel.
“We have a lot of fun,” he said.
Participants leave with a pound to 1.5 pounds of candy. Lund said he also invites graduates to give him a call and ask questions if they’re having trouble achieving success at home.
Lund said he finds candy making therapeutic. He loves “getting his hands dirty” in the chocolate. Besides being fun, he said he’s “God” to the grandkids.
Participant C.J. Johnson said she was having trouble continuing her caramel-making tradition in Park City before the class. Lund helped her achieve the right temperature to get the correct consistency.
“He made the class so fun, I had a great time and now I make incredible caramel,” she said.
Her friend, Paige Wakefield, also said she had a great time.
“It was fun, mostly because of him. He has a great personality,” she said.
People have attended the candy class from as far away as Vernal, Toly said.
The deadline for signing up is Oct. 12. Register online at www.pcschools.us and click on the community education tab. Details about the class can be found in The Compass Brochure, a quarterly brochure from the school district mailed to all Park City residents.
The leisure program gives both young people and adults the opportunity to take non-credit classes for fun. The classes are self-funded, which means class fees pay for the supplies, the facility and the instructor. Anyone is welcome to participate.
Lund said the class has been especially popular with mother-daughter and sister teams.