Confection Perfection

LAKEWOOD RANCH — Only Peter Vrinios can make fudge making look boring.

Dozens of people gather around him and peer through the windows of Good Earth Natural Foods on Lakewood Ranch Main Street as the GreyHawk Landing resident wrestles with a giant Hershey’s Kiss-shaped glob of gold, green and red.

As he works the candy, pulling with just the right motion and force, a spiral of color forms into a perfect cane.

Then, with an expert flick of the wrist, Vrinios’ candy cane becomes the embodiment of a 113-year-old tradition fulfilled.

“A lot of people have never seen this before,” says Vrinios, whose family has been making candy canes without machinery for more than a century. “We do it exactly like it was.”

With the help of family and friends, Vrinios will be making candy canes at Good Earth through Dec. 23. Folks can simply drop by to purchase homemade candy canes, ribbon candy and peanut brittle or they can watch Vrinios and his helpers as they turn a mixture of scalding sugar water into a batch of candy canes and other delicacies.

Children even can participate in the process by making the bend in their own candy canes.

“That’s always a big draw,” Vrinios says.

FAMILY TRADITION
Vrinios’ grandfather, also Peter Vrinios, immigrated to the United States from Greece in 1989. After landing in Chicago, he purchased the first piece of property he saw and brought his trade of candy making to the area by opening a confectionary in Champaign, Ill. The shop offered homemade ice cream, candies and other treats.

The younger Peter Vrinios started assisting his father, Samuel, and grandfather with their confectionary creations when he was just 7 years old.

Peter Vrinios says his grandfather’s worn recipe offered little insight into the candy-making business. Each recipe contained only a list of ingredients.

“And then (it says), ‘Go to work,’” Vrinios remembers with a chuckle. “He didn’t tell all the secrets.”

But the young Vrinios learned quickly.

“I started rolling,” he says of working small sections of candy cane before their hooks are bent. “You always start out rolling. It’s an easy job. It’s the cooling process.”

Next, Vrinios progressed to bending the hooks.

Although many confectionaries began using machinery around 1928, the Vrinios family continued to make its treats completely by hand.

“My grandfather always did it the old-fashioned way,” Vrinios says.

The Vrinios family sold its original confectionary the year of its 100th anniversary, pulling out the confectionary’s 1,000-pound marble slab and copper kettles for cooking candies. Peter Vrinios and his family continued making candy canes for the holiday season at a five-star restaurant a block down the street.

Peter Vrinios and his family moved to the East County six years ago but continued to head back to Illinois for the holidays, where the giving of their handmade creations had become a tradition of its own.

“We decided it was time to make it in Florida this year,” Peter Vrinios says.

And so, the Vrinios family has set up its 113-year family tradition in the Lakewood Ranch Good Earth store, where they are making candies Tuesdays through Sundays.

SWEET SUCCESS
As Peter Vrinios learned as a child, the candy cane-making process isn’t as simple as it looks. Molding the candy into a candy cane, or other shapes, requires a special “touch” learned only through experience.

First, Peter Vrinios mixes the proper amounts of water, sugar and cream of tartar into a copper kettle and waits for it to reach 300 degrees. The process usually takes about 45 minutes.

Then, Peter Vrinios and a helper will pour its contents on the marble slab, creating what looks like a lake of hot sugar. After sprinkling flavoring over it, Peter Vrinios and his son, Sammy, begin the cooling process, using a spatula to push the edges toward the center. Once the mixture reaches the right firmness, Vrinios, with gloved hands, shapes the mixture into one large glob and breaks off two smaller pieces.
Sammy and a friend each take the smaller pieces and slowly knead in coloring — one green and one red.

On a wall hook nearby, Peter Vrinios takes the larger glob and kneads in white coloring. Once the coloring has thoroughly been worked through the candy, the three regroup at the marble slab, where Peter Vrinios again shapes a square and strategically places strips of the colored candy.

Then, molding the mixture into a large blob, Peter Vrinios carries the candy to another table, where an assembly line of family and friends stand ready and waiting, and places it on its side.

Peter Vrinios begins to work, pulling the candy into a smooth cane shape and pointing where to cut it with scissors.

“It takes a special touch,” Peter Vrinios says of the process. “If you don’t pull it just right, they fall apart.”

Family and friends eagerly await the candy cane sticks, rolling them as Peter Vrinios did as a child to help the pieces cool, and then carefully bending their hooks at the right moment.

Bending the canes too soon can make them go flat, Peter Vrinios says. A light touch keeps the canes from being dented with fingerprints.

“There are no two canes alike, and they just taste better,” Peter’s wife, Jamie Vrinios says. “It’s like processed versus organic.”

The Vrinios family makes up to 1,000 candy canes per day during the height of their candy-making season.

At the end of each candy cane batch, Vrinios uses a portion of the candy cane mixture instead to create ribbon candy.

TASTY TWISTS
Peter Vrinios offers 10 flavors of candy canes, including wintergreen, peppermint, cinnamon and even cotton candy, all priced at $5 for a regular-sized cane. The Vrinioses also make ribbon candy and peanut brittle.

Peter Vrinios says he can make special orders, such as extra large canes or those made in special colors for parties or school functions, and has even written names in candy canes in years’ past.

A majority of this year’s proceeds will benefit Compassion International, a Christian child advocacy ministry founded in 1952. The organization provides child development aid to more than one million children in 26 countries in Asia, Africa, South America, Central America and the Caribbean through child sponsorships.

Contact Pam Eubanks at [email protected].

Cause for Celebration
To each child who makes his own candy cane, Vrinios makes sure to pass out a paper containing the story of the Christmas candy cane, which incorporates several components of the Christmas story into its coloring and structure, including the birth, ministry and death of Jesus Christ.

“We thought that would be a nice way for them to remember the real reason for Christmas,” Peter Vrinios says.