Planes, Trains, & Automobiles, plus a Brief Shipping Delay

My travels and exploits during the Strange Folk Festival will take the better part of a week, as I fly into Chicago, carpool to and from O'Fallon (outside St. Louis), and finally return to Seattle by train. Accordingly, new online orders will be briefly delayed.

Specifically, orders placed between Sept 26 - Oct 3 will begin shipping by Friday October 4. Thanks in advance for your understanding! And you can peek at my Instagram account to see photos from the adventures. See you soon!

New Stockist: Eat Local

Eat Local is a business I kind of wish *I* had invented! They make awesome from-scratch prepared frozen meals using (obviously) locally-sourced ingredients. As my grandmother used to say, "delicious, nutritious! Makes you feel ambitious!"

My goofy family sayings aside, I've already tried several of Eat Local's soups and it's clear that we share an philosophy of creating great flavor combinations. Hazelnut & White Bean? Apricot Lentil? Oh yeah!

So this is basically a dream match. We're thrilled to be in their selection of locally produced pantry items, along with confections from Theo Chocolates and Jonboy Caramels; jams from Tiny's Organic and honey from Moon Valley.

If that weren't enough, I just about fainted from delight when I saw that Erin in their Capitol Hill location drew this amazing sketch of Morrissey saying "you deserve a ten minute treat" for their in-store display:

Don't argue with Morriseey.

Eat Local's shop in Capitol Hill

This news also means that Capitol Hill residents once again have a neighborhood option for lollipop shopppin'!

503 Broadway E
Open from 9am to 11pm everyday

Midwest Candy Fest Continues...

One of my business goals this year was to add a few new cities & events to my tour schedule. Until this year I've stuck to west coast cities within driving distance. I'm really excited to have two opportunities to reach Midwest customers this month. Earlier this month This Charming Candy had its Chicago debut, and now we're gearing up for our first St. Louis area appearance at Strange Folk Festival!

Here's what you need to know:

September 28-29
10 am - 6 pm both days
O’Fallon Community Park
O'Fallon, IL (15 min from downtown St. Louis)

New Stockist: Fireworks Galleries

We're excited to announce Fireworks Galleries as a new Seattle-area stockist of This Charming Candy's lollipops. With an emphasis on "practical objects with a playful edge", and featuring many talented local artists from the Pacific Northwest, last year Fireworks was voted the #1 gift shop in KING5's "Best of Western Washington" awards.

I've been to the University Village location where they've got several brands of delicious candies on the checkout counter, including a flowerpot full of lollies:

A flowerpot full of delicious lollipops
Fireworks is carrying many of our popular flavors!

The Fireworks Gallery shop in U Village

We're really thrilled to be working with them. Next time you're at any of their six area stores, look for our lollies!

Chicago or Bust: Renegade Craft Fair

Tomorrow, I'm taking this show on the road again, this time in a cross-country train adventure! Meredith from Sweet Anthem Handmade Perfumes and I are boarding an Amtrak train bound Chicago where we'll be sharing booth #38 at the original Renegade Craft Fair. You can check my Instagram account if you'd like to see photos from the journey.

I'm excited and frankly a little frightened! What if I forget something important? I can't very well drive back to my house to get it. Wish me luck - and if your weekend plans include shopping the show, I'm looking forward to seeing you there. Having learned my lesson at Renegade San Francisco in July, rest assured I'll have lots of the new gems with me!

Hard Candy Gems are our newest offering!

It seems that my kitty, Matilda, wants to come to Chicago with me. I'm sure I could use a little help running the booth, but she hasn't yet learned to count change for cash transactions (she's a whiz at running credit cards though). Too bad, Matilda! I promise I'll see you again soon :-)

Matilda is the prettiest cat in the world!

Bana-nutella Macarons

My buddy Joyce is a trained pastry chef. I know! I'm so lucky!

She bakes recreationally as opposed to professionally these days, and her specialty is macarons, the delightfully delicate almond meringue sandwich cookies. Making macarons is a different and fun way to experiment with flavor combinations in non-lollipop form, and I recently got hold of a few flavored baking emulsions...

Luckily, Joyce keeps a packed kit on standby for bringing her talents to wherever she's needed. She just grabs a hunk of buttercream from her freezer stash (yes, you read that correctly), and armed with a pair of pastry bags and tips, almond flour, silpat mats, and other goodies, she's ready.

The plan: Banana flavored cookies filled with Nutella buttercream...

Joyce models the Banana baking emulsion... it's more viscous and cloudy than a flavor extract.
Supposedly, emulsions don't "bake out" as readily as extracts. 

I love vibrant colors, so obviously I wanted Electric Yellow
to color the meringue for the cookies!

Joyce pipes like a pro. Because she IS a pro.

I pipe like a doofus. Because I AM a doofus. Well, I'm just inexperienced.
This awkwardness is *after* I switched to using my dominant hand to squeeze the bag. 

We forgot to take pictures of making and piping the
Nutella buttercream, but here's a finished cookie. Yum!

Overall we judged it a mixed success. The cookies tasted good on their own, and the Nutella buttercream tasted good too. In sandwich form, the banana flavor got a little lost next to the Nutella. Letting them hang out overnight in the fridge helped though - I think they tasted more balanced the next day.

Do you have a favorite macaron combination?