Watch the Complete MADE HERE
Video Series on YouTube. MADE HEREWant to do this at home? You don’t need to
make the hundreds of candies per batch that
we do. What you’ll need is sugar, water, corn syrup, and
coloring. That’s it. Using these ingredients plus a candy
thermometer, heavy saucepan, and possibly candy
molds, homemade hard candy is only 30 minutes away.”HOW
IT’S
DONE
I
LEFT MY JOB IN THE INSURANCE
industry in 2003. My degree was
in fine art; I wanted to make
something. While taking a pastry
course, I paid the bills working
part-time at a candy shop. It was
there I discovered a passion for
making confections.
All of the drawing, painting,
sculpture, and ceramics I learned
in school collided with my child-
hood passion for baking. The best
part was I could do all of this with
three simple ingredients.
Then all it really took was one
smell during an interview at Ham-
mond’s Candies in 2004 to know
this was where I belonged. It took
about a year, learning how to pull,
assemble, and form hot candy from
a 100-degree open f lame and lift 50
to 80 pounds of ingredients, to mas-
ter it. When I made it to full-time in
the kitchen in 2005, I became the
first woman in Hammond’s history
to do so.
Women usually worked pack-
aging because it was “too hard”
physically in the kitchen. On my
first day, unwelcome looks greeted
me. Over a decade later, you bet I’m
in the kitchen sweating it out, com-
ing up with new ideas for our candy
to put smiles on customers’ faces.POP^ MECH^ VIDEO^ EDITORS92 May/June 202012
// KAMMY STUCKER, 49, DIRECTOR OF PLANT OPERATIONS AT HAMMOND’S CANDIES, DENVER //