Front page · Treacle’s Sweet Works
COSYFORD all the way through: a day at the town’s sweet factory
Sukie Treacle has made the town’s rock, fudge and chocolates since she was tall enough to see over the marble. Now she has a partner, and the wrapping line has never gone so fast.
Orders come in by phone and through the letterbox: the jar shop on the high street, the kiosk down by the harbour, the school fete, a birthday party. Every sweet has its own knack.
Chocolate is tipped out hot onto the cold marble, and you work it with a scraper: spread it out thin and push it back together. Thin on the marble it cools fast, and the thermometer shows it dropping. Stop in the green and it is tempered: scrape it into the pink mould, tap the bubbles out and pop them out, glossy, with a proper snap. Stop too warm or too cool and they come out dull and streaky. Still delicious.
Rock starts as amber sugar on the big hook. Pull it down to the green line and let go, and it folds back over; every pull it goes whiter and shinier. Then tap the letters in, in order (COSYFORD, mostly), roll it up in its pink casing, roll it out long and thin and chop it. Hold a piece up to the light and there it is, all the way through. Candy canes get their stripes laid on as the rope turns, twisted as it is rolled, and their hooks bent on.
Fruit jellies are dropped into a tray of starch from a depositor that slides to and fro (tap as it passes over each shape), tipped out and tossed in sugar. Oat milk fudge is beaten in the copper pan till it loses its shine, cut into squares and sent down the wrapping line, where you tap to twist each one into its wrapper as they come past, faster and faster. Weddings, once there is a chocolate fountain, want strawberries dipped in it.
