Art of the candy cane: Calgary business owner shares the secret

Sarah Sullivan with Calgary's Volio's Confections says candy canes are made in precise conditions and the flavour, colour and shine can all be influenced with tiny changes.

Inside a small confectionary shop along Calgary’s Eighth Avenue S.W., candy canes aren’t just a holiday treat.

They’re a months-long, hands-on production for the couple behind Volio’s Confections.

Before opening the store together, it was Sarah Sullivan who had already spent years making candy on her own.

She says she never expected the hobby to grow into a business until her partner - now husband - encouraged her to take the next step.

“I met David on Tinder, and I made candy to try and impress him, and he’s like, ‘This is really good!’,” Sullivan said.

“One day he said to me, ‘You should open a candy store.’”

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Today, the pair spend the busiest months of the year - September through December - making thousands of candy canes by hand.

The process behind each batch starts with sugar, glucose and water heated to precise temperatures.

Sullivan says every type of candy demands its own exact threshold.

“Say the marshmallows, you’re cooking to 240 degrees,” she said.

“Hard candy is between 310 and 320, depending on the humidity.”

Once the mixture reaches the right stage, the physical work begins.

The candy is repeatedly folded and pulled on a hook, a step Sullivan says affects everything from colour to flavour.

“We pull it on the hook to put air into it,” she said.

“It reflects light better, it makes the colours stand out, and it makes the candy feel better on the tongue.”

‘We’ve got hot candy’

She admits the work surprises people who assume candy making is delicate rather than strenuous.

“It’s like the world’s best hot workout. You know, people pay for hot yoga. We’ve got hot candy,” Sullivan said.

Her partner, David, agrees. After leaving a construction job, he says the candy shop comes with its own physical toll.

“There’s a lot of standing, a lot of craning over tables for eight plus hours a day. My arms get tired hauling bags of sugar and corn syrup,” he said.

The couple’s peppermint candy cane has become their signature product - long, heavy and far stronger in flavour than most store-bought versions.

“When you try our peppermint candy canes, it will hit you in the face with peppermint,” Sullivan said.

Volio’s Confections now sells tens of thousands of candy canes each Christmas and ships them across Canada.

This year’s candy cane production will hit 25,000 - 30 per cent higher than last year.

Still, the owners have declined offers from large retailers.

Sullivan says the charm would disappear if production ever shifted to a factory-style operation.

“If we get bigger and turn into that factory-style place, it will lose a lot of the magic,” she said.

“The whole point is that I love to make candy. I like to be the person here making everything.”

Some customers have already become instant converts.

Walter Furness, visiting from New Brunswick, says he stopped in by chance and bought some candy canes and returned the next day for more sweet treats.

“They’re so good, and they’re really big too, so they last a while,” Furness said.

“You don’t really get anything like that back home, so it was pretty special to be able to find that.”

With demand climbing each year, the couple says hand-rolled, small-batch candy canes will remain the heart of their business ,even if it means another season of long days, hot tables and sticky fingers.