In 2009, I won a blue ribbon at the Iowa State Fair for my caramels. It was my mom’s recipe, and it took me several tries to get them to taste and be the same consistency as hers. But the State Fair was not my original goal.
I made a batch of caramels one weekend, and since a batch makes approximately 100 individual caramels (depending upon how you cut them), we had far too many caramels for ourselves. So, I brought about half of them to the Capitol. Legislators and lobbyists will eat anything. I put them in a community candy dish in the House Lobby Lounge. A few minutes later I was approached by Lana Shope. Lana is everything Fair. She asked if I made them. Oh, oh. I hope she’s not sick from them. After I let her know that I d
That summer, I made a batch and read the instructions for entering a sample. Suzette’s, a candy maker on Ingersoll Avenue (now closed), sponsored one of two contests. It’s judges met on a Tuesday. I noticed that my sample was set aside with the dozen or more others that were obviously rejected. We peeked at the comments. “Not arranged proportionally, too soft.” No one told me that each piece had to be cut symmetrically to the other three. And “soft” was the point.