How Are Peppermint Sticks Made?
How Are Peppermint Sticks Made? To make peppermint candy sticks, sugar and other candy ingredients are cooked in a big pot, then poured onto a table. There the candy cools and partly hardens. Red coloring is added to part of the candy.
The rest is flavored with peppermint and put into a machine that stretches the candy. This will be the white part. Next, workers press red candy stripes into the white candy. Now, the candy is stretched, twisted and squeezed into a long candy rope, and cut into sticks.
Some sticks are bent into “canes,” and some are left straight. In the 1800s, bright red (and sometimes also bright blue) swirled with white were the most common colors. Candy is produced in a wide variety of fruit and berry flavors. There are also varieties containing two different flavors swirled together.
These sticks are generally sold shrink-wrapped in clear plastic, and traditionally displayed for sale in wide-mouthed glass jars. They were originally sold by the piece for a nickel or dime; they are also sold in bulk.