Cross-State Collaboration: PB Wiki

As we’ve said before, This Charming Candy consists of two people: me and Kate. And we live in different states. So how do we stay organized and productive when we only see each other a few times a year at most?

There are a few obvious collaboration methods – we send a LOT of email, use instant messaging, and have a phone call every Monday morning to check in and set a rough agenda for the week.

But we knew early on that we were going to generate a lot of content, much more than those channels could gracefully handle. So we created a wiki at PBWorks and it’s been a great way for us to store thoughts and ideas, documents, all kinds of stuff.

Every time we generate a new topic, whether it’s research on competitors, a list of suppliers, notes from a tax workshop, or ideas for upcoming blog posts, we create a wiki page with that information in it. It’s so easy. We use the main page of our wiki as a combined To-do list and an index that links to all of the content we store in the wiki.

Of course, like any collaboration method, the most important factor is probably that we are both committed to using the wiki to store and organize our work :-)

Hockey!

If you know Susan and me, you know that we like hockey. I live near San Jose, which makes the Sharks my home team. Susan grew up in Philadelphia, so the Flyers are near and dear to her heart.

This afternoon, the Sharks announced that they've traded two players (who have been good, but didn't thrive under the new coach) for Dany Heatley. Heatley played for the University of Wisconsin, where I went to college, and for Atlanta, where I lived before moving to Silicon Valley (and where we had season tickets). So I'm happy to see a familiar face on the team again, but at the same time, Heatley can be kind of a drama queen. The Sharks are not known for putting up with that.

My take on it: this could be good. Heatley could give the team a new spark, but he could also not fit in well. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this is what the Sharks need to finally get to the Stanley Cup finals!

Other Unusually Flavored Candies

Mental Floss had a Quick 10: Unusual Flavors of 10 Familiar Candies list yesterday, which only seems apropos given the last post about our own unusual flavors. I'm seriously intrigued by Red Bean Kit Kats and Blood Orange Dots. I wonder if anyone sells them around here. Hmmm...

Why Such Offbeat Flavors?

We mentioned in an earlier post that we both love to cook. I love cooking both for the chemistry and because you get to answer the question: what flavors taste good together?

There are five different basic tastes: sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami (a meaty, protein-y flavor, like soy sauce). Different amounts of different tastes is what makes complex dishes interesting.

Lollipops are obviously sweet -- the main process to make them is to dissolve sugar in water. But what flavors do you add? Sour, or acidic, flavors are long popular in sweet treats - apples to a degree, lemon, and lime are all sour. In fact, all our fruit flavors have citric acid added to them; they didn't taste as good without it. During our tasting party, we also offered up other flavors: coffee (bitter), tangerine-clove (sour and bitter), salted caramel, vanilla-cardamom (bitter again).

Using the tasting party data, we've settled on what we'll be offering for sale for now. That said, we love experimenting. We want to find out how different flavors taste together and whether or not they work as a lollipop. I personally want to someday try salted lime, jalapeno, cinnamon, and lemon-plum. Once the business is up and running, we'll continue to experiment.

What flavors would you like to see?

All That Glitters

One of the coolest products for decorating cakes, cookies and candies is disco dust. It's similar to edible glitter and lustre dust, but has the consistency and appearance of the craft glitter you probably used for elementary school art projects. I love how it looks on the surface of a finished lollipop - giving it sparkle and a little texture too.

Disco dust comes in lots of fun colors and I have to try really hard not to buy them all! You'll find disco dust on the following flavors:

• Gold on Tangerine Clove (in the Spice Rack)
• White on Pistachio-Marshmallow (in the Adventurer's Pack)
• Red on Maple (in the Breakfast Tray)
• Silver on Bubble Gum (in Celebration Time)

Here's a closer look at the gold glitter on a Tangerine-Clove lollipop:

photo by Kevin Keeker

The Boiling Point

After I'd been making lollipops for a while, I leafed to the Confectionery chapter in my copy of Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking and read something that I no doubt learned in high school chemistry class years ago: adding dissolved molecules of something to pure water will raise its boiling point.

As McGee says, "The more foreign molecules, the higher the boiling point." Syrup, of course, consists of dissolved sugar molecules in water. As more of the water boils off, the syrup becomes ever more concentrated, and its boiling point becomes even higher. Nearly all of the water must be boiled off for the syrup to reach the temperature needed for making hard candy (~302 degrees F).

In practical terms, I realized that if I started with less water in the pan in the first place, it could take less time to make a batch of lollipops because there'd be less water that needed to boil away during the process. Neat, huh!