If you thought Palladium Mall lost its sweet corner after dessert queen Sanjana Patel’s La Folie Lab on the third floor closed down, fret not. In its place, international candy store Papabubble–Caramels Artisans opens today.
An open store, one can watch the candy being made from across a glass partition at Papabubble. And be warned, it is not just the children who will be unable to resist the show.
Retail racks offer ready-to-buy candy jars and packets that are priced from Rs. 115 and go up to packages worth Rs. 10,000. Mini hard-boiled candies in the shape of lemons, watermelons and strawberries with intricate detailing of the fruit make for a tempting sight.
For the sake of hygiene, visitors cannot enter the room where the candy mixture of water, sugar and glucose is being slow boiled. There’s also a separate section that’s designated for a marble-top cooling station, where the candy mixture is poured for cooling and the induction-induced hot table for crafting the candy.
You can expect theatrics as two senior candy makers, Sumit Sehgal and Garrison Musquitta, have spent three months in Barcelona, Spain, to train in the art of candy making. They run the store for Burgundy Hospitality, the folks behind Royce Chocolate in India, which has brought the candy brand.
“We spent the first month learning how to make basic candy, using water, glucose and sugar, after which we moved to using fruits, and then the tough part of customisation: logos, alphabets, letters and even faces. It is like an art puzzle that comes together into desired shapes and words,” says Sehgal, checking the induction cooker on which the mixture for hard-boiled candy is on its way to a slow boil.
On offer are sweets in the shape of inch-size pillows, and small, medium and large lollipops, which are circular and heart-shaped. The candy-making duo is also trained in print-a-pop lollipops, where edible pictures are printed onto candy, and making hand-drawn faces.
The sweetest demo
Both Sehgal and Musquitta pad up with fire-resistant aprons and gloves, for the pot of candy solution will be poured on a cooling marble-top, where it will become a soft and playful mixture. As it cools down, it turns into a transparent clay-like form with a temperature of 170°C.
“We let it cool down to around 130° Celsius and then add edible colours,” says Musquitta, pouring red on the left bottom corner, and spreading it with a spatula. On the far right, Sehgal adds green, and ensures the colours don’t mix. “Due to the cool temperature of the colour we add, the mixture bubbles,” Sehgal says.
He then uses a pair of scissors to cut out green, yellow and red-coloured chunks. They will work on them separately first.
Musquitta kneads the white candy mixture, but he needs to make it fluffier as it goes into the centre filling, wrapped in a colourful candy layer. For this, he hangs it on a hook, and skillfully stretches it, to give it a softer, smoother finish. Meanwhile, Sehgal’s nimble fingers create neat, colourful slabs which he straightens out. Between the three coloured strips, he adds a thin white candy strip to form a pinstripe.
A completely handcrafted process, he now covers a cylindrical white candy slab with the colourful outer layer. He rolls it evenly on the warm table, thinning it in the process. It looks like a candy snake, and is now ready to go into the pillow mould cutter.
Musquitta, on the other end, is receiving the semi-cut pillow candy strip that will be cut and packed once cooled. The entire process takes 30 minutes, and all the workers and set up staff have stopped their work to watch the show. He offers us a piece. Still hot, the candy has a Jamaican flavour, and tastes like a pina colada.
Sehgal says, “The minimum batch of customised candy starts from four kg and goes up to 12 kg. We also make marshmallows, a process which takes one-and-a-half hours. These too require the same ingredients. The only difference is gelatin is added in the blender in the end, along with the colour.” Sehgal confesses that the training was like going back to a science lab. “It is all about the temperature. If it is too low, the candy will not bind, and if it is high, the sugar will burn.”
Indian flavours
Sehgal offers a candy from their limited edition of Indian flavours. Something is not right, for it tastes like biryani. “It is biryani,” laughs Sehgal, adding that the other flavours include kulfi, kala khatta and badam halwa. “These flavours are in a liquid form and contain alcohol, which evaporates in such a high temperature.”
The author is a freelance writer
