A Photo, Deconstructed

photo by Kevin Keeker

If you were paying attention to us on twitter on Sunday, you know we were taking some photos. (And drinking tea in an INCREDIBLY backlit screenshot of me. Sudz looks great.)

This is one of the photos that didn't make the Etsy cut. Why?

1. The sugar cane in front oddly dominates the picture.
2. This is the back of bag, not the front.
3. We felt that the patterns on the teapot competed too much.
4. In fact, there was just too much to look at overall.

We'll have other, better, pictures of our Adventure Pack packaging on Etsy soon, so you can see what did satisfy us.

Happy Gluten-Free Birthday!

photo by Kevin Keeker

I have a few friends with celiac disease, also known as gluten intolerance and I’ve come to really admire the creative alternatives that they use. One of my friends has shared some of her gluten free cookies with me and they were seriously delicious.

All of our lollipop ingredients are gluten-free, so any of our flavors can be enjoyed if you’ve eliminated gluten from your diet. But we wanted to call special attention to our Birthday Cake flavor, which makes a particularly great treat for a gluten-free birthday celebration.

photo by Kevin Keeker

We mix a few different flavors to emulate the taste of a classic yellow cake. We’re very proud of this one – people are amazed by its cake-y taste. For fun, we put festive neon candy sprinkles (which are rice-based and gluten free) in the molds before pouring in the syrup, which results in colorful polka dots floating inside the finished lollipops.

So if you’re hoping to taste “cake” without ingesting gluten and without having to do any baking, check out our lollipops!

Eye Candy: Holy Kaw!

I recently learned about Holy Kaw thanks to twitter, and I'm kind of in love with their daily infographics, particularly the ones that involve food, like the Anatomy of a Cupcake (partial below) or the World's Strongest & Strangest Beers.

I'm pretty sure that they're linking to infographics they find, not creating them themselves, but I love how gorgeous they are! 

Our Taste Testers RULE

Cameraphone picture by Susan Dziadosz.
Despite the backlighting, I couldn't
resist taking a picture of one of
our taste-testers holding 3 lollipops in her
hands. That's dedication!

Yes, Kate and I could just make candy in a vacuum, but we’d rather make candy that lots of people will like. That’s why early feedback – and lots of it – is a way of life here at This Charming Candy.

We’re very fortunate to have access to many willing and eager taste testers who give honest and critical opinions. It’s incredibly helpful to know which flavor combinations are on the right track, which ones need a little work, and which ones need a LOT of work or should just be abandoned.

Here’s a little peek behind the scenes at the first round of feedback we got on some of the candidates for our upcoming Fruit Basket.

Flavor combination A elicited mostly negative remarks like

a few more licks and I was done. Not for me. –Joyce

one of the few of your lollies I didn't finish –Eric

Flavor combo B got mixed reviews, including

Something about (flavor 1) fit well with the (flavor 2) – Kris

Don’t care for it, tastes medicinal. Too much (flavor 2), not enough (flavor 1). A bit sour, not in a good way –Simon

Flavor C was a single-flavor lollipop, not a combination, and it just didn’t seem to be engaging enough for our tasters:

A bit boring and simple. – Justine

good base, but much simpler than I'm used to from This Charming Candy – Bill

Still another combination, D, garnered raves, such as

My favorite. I loved this combo. PERFECT. I could have eaten ten of these. Not too sweet and very flavorful. – Bay

LOVE that this SMELLS (of flavor 3) when you take it out of the wrapper. This tastes great. – Jen

So what did we do with all this feedback?

• Combination A has been shelved. We might come back to it in the future and see if it can be improved at all.
• We made adjustments to combination B for the next two rounds of tasting – and unfortunately the feedback stayed mixed. It’s shelved for now. But sometimes we offer polarizing flavors such as Tangerine-Clove and they find their fans. We might still offer combination B for sale sometime.
• We turned flavor C into a flavor blend and suddenly it was almost everyone’s favorite. We’ll talk more about this one in another blog post.
• I couldn’t resist tinkering with combination D for the most recent tasting round to see if it could be even better. Feedback on the update has been positive, but not at the level the original recipe received, so we’ll probably leave that one alone. I guess it was perfect on the first try!

It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

photo by Kevin Keeker

No, I’m not talking about Christmas or any holiday, despite snagging this post’s title from a secular carol. I’m talking about developing new lollipop flavors!

Unlike a calendar-based holiday or event, we can do this whenever and however often we like. Right now we’re working on a new Fruit Basket – a trio of fruit-based flavors that we hope to start selling in April.

Our process is roughly what you might expect. Kate & I brainstorm flavor ideas all year long and keep a big list of them. Then we do a little more focused brainstorming before kicking off a phase of making edible samples.

I’ll make several small batches (small = 12 lollipops) and pass out the pops to whatever friends and neighbors are available and interested to give feedback. And of course I mail some to Kate. I gather the feedback, make changes to the recipes, and make more pops. Sometimes I make more new flavors along the way. The feedback keeps rolling in and that helps us narrow down the flavors to the best-liked ones.

This time, it’s taken 3 tasting rounds to narrow 10 candidate flavors down to the best ones. I anticipate another round of iteration focused on refining those recipes to their absolute best. And soon, we’ll be able to let you know what flavors to expect in the Fruit Basket!

Listener-Supported Radio

image downloaded from kexp.org

Here in Seattle, WA, we’re very fortunate to have an outstanding independent radio station that champions independent musicians from Seattle and from around the globe – KEXP.org. You can stream the station worldwide and access a truly astonishing variety of completely free services including archived broadcasts, live performances, and podcasts. I can’t even begin to count all the amazing bands I’ve discovered thanks to KEXP in the dozen years since I started listening.

Here’s some This Charming Candy trivia: I often rent kitchen time on Sundays. It’s a slow day for caterers, so I generally have the place to myself. There’s a radio in the kitchen and KEXP keeps me company while I’m making candy – starting a little before Preachin The Blues, continuing through Stevie Zoom and Quilty3000’s variety hours, and finishing up around when Street Sounds hits the airwaves. Yes, there’s a near 100% chance that the lollipops you’ve been enjoying were cooked, poured, and wrapped while I was listening to KEXP.

KEXP is in the midst of its Spring membership drive. If you’re a fan of good independent music –and if you’re reading this, you’re obviously a fan of good independent candy!– please consider becoming a member.

When you power KEXP, KEXP powers This Charming Candy :-)