The Candymakers Read online

  “I liked the egg toss best,” Daisy said a bit breathlessly as she rejoined the group. She must have been running—an activity highly frowned upon in the factory because of the likelihood of bumping into someone carrying trays filled with freshly made candy. Not that that ever stopped Logan.

  “Finally,” Philip grumbled, glancing at his watch. “Can we get on with the tour now?”

  “Sorry,” Daisy said, addressing her apology to Max, not Philip. “I got lost, and when I stopped at the Some More S’mores Room to ask how to get back here, well, it was hard to leave that place. All that silky, warm chocolate and those buckets of gooey marshmallows and those freshly baked graham crackers…” her voice trailed off, the longing evident.

  “You should try one straight out of the oven,” Logan said earnestly.

  “You’ll soon get your chance,” Max said. “We’ll be sampling everything today as part of your training.”

  Daisy and Miles cheered. Philip twisted his watch back and forth anxiously. Logan wondered if that boy ever relaxed for even a minute.

  Max clapped his hands and said, “Now let’s get to work, people!”

  They all lined up along the window and watched the chocolate-making process unfold. Logan had seen it every day of his life (except Sundays, when the machines were cleaned out) but never tired of it. The Cocoa Room was the domain of Lenny and Steve, brothers who had been at the factory for ten years. They had grown up on a real cocoa plantation and loved chocolate so much they were always the first people in the doors in the morning and the last to leave.

  Lenny tied on his apron (which would stay white for about three seconds) and waved at them. They all waved back except for Philip, who apparently couldn’t be bothered. Lenny then grabbed a hatchet from a hook on the wall and began to break open the large yellow pods, spilling gooey white beans on the counter. Steve gathered the beans in his gloved hands, rinsed them off in a big metal sink, and tossed them into a giant revolving cylinder. The waves of heat rising from the beans as they roasted mesmerized all of them. Max had to snap his fingers in front of their faces to regain their attention. He led them to the other end of the window to watch the hulling machine crack the beans in half.

  “Cool!” Miles said as tiny bean nibs popped out of the shells.

  Logan wondered what it must feel like to be seeing this for the first time. He tried to pretend he’d never seen the machine that was now compressing the nibs (along with milk from Bessie and sugar from the factory’s sugarcane crop) into a gooey cocoa butter. Or the one that ground up the rest of the bean into a fine brown powder. Alas, he couldn’t do it.

  “This is my favorite part,” he whispered to Miles.

  They watched as the cocoa butter was blended with the cocoa powder to make a thick paste. Then, for the final touch, Steve pulled out a square tin from the cabinet above him, peered inside, then sprinkled a pinch into the mixture. The result? Nothing less than the best-tasting chocolate in the world. At least Logan thought it was the best, and he’d tasted a LOT of chocolate in his lifetime.

  “What’s in that tin?” Daisy asked, pointing to the last ingredient the brothers had used.

  Max smiled. “Ah, my dear. You have stumbled upon one of the Candymaker’s few trade secrets.”

  She tilted her head. “What’s a trade secret?”

  Philip rolled his eyes again. Logan wondered if the boy needed to see a doctor about that. Maybe his eyeballs were loose or something.

  “A trade secret,” Philip explained, tucking his pen behind his ear, “is something that a businessman does not reveal. If everyone knew about it, they’d be able to duplicate his product.”

  “That’s it in a nutshell,” Max said. “That’s how we protect our recipe.”

  Daisy glanced back at the cabinet where the tin was now tucked away again. She turned to Logan. “You must know all these secrets, living here and all.”

  “You’d think so,” he replied, pretending to glare at Max. He’d been asking about that secret ingredient since he learned how to talk, but Max steadfastly refused to answer. It was the one ingredient in all of their products that Logan couldn’t identify by taste. He turned back to Daisy. “Believe it or not, I don’t know either.”

  “Dad’s afraid you’ll sell it to a competitor, eh?” She gave him a playful nudge.

  Logan grinned. “That must be it.” Truthfully, though, the unwritten code of honor among candymakers would never allow that to happen.

  Max patted his shoulder. “All will be revealed the day you officially come on board, my boy. That’s the tradition.”

  Logan swallowed hard. Everyone took for granted that he could follow in his father’s sizable footsteps. He forced a smile and took some deep breaths. He wished he could get outside for a few minutes. His mind always felt clearer under the sky. He took one last peek through the glass ceiling before Max led them deeper into the factory. He only had time to look for one cloud, one shape.

  A monkey riding a bike, he thought. While eating a grape Blast-o-Bit. He instantly felt better.

  But not for long.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Hi, everyone! Come in, come in!” Fran, the superenergetic head taffy maker, welcomed them to their next stop on the tour. Her muscles rippled as she motioned them inside the Taffy Room. Fran could probably have won an arm-wrestling contest with any of the men in the factory, except maybe Avery in the Tropical Room. Climbing trees all day made you even stronger than stretching taffy.

  Daisy’s and Miles’s eyes widened as they took it all in. Even Philip couldn’t stop looking around. The Taffy Room held the unofficial title of Most Colorful Place in the Factory; only the Cotton Candy Room came close. Rows of liquid-filled jugs lined the walls, representing every color of the rainbow and every color that should be in the rainbow but isn’t. Each flavor had been lovingly created from fruits and vegetables grown right on the factory grounds.

  “Look around, children,” Fran said, spreading her arms wide. “You can see taffy in every stage of creation. Those kettles over there? Cane sugar and butterfat, boiling at exactly 238 degrees. That table to your right is called a cooling table. That’s where the taffy hardens. Water circulates underneath to keep the surface at the correct temperature. How cool is that? Pun intended!”

  They all agreed it was very cool.

  They watched assistant taffy makers roll a huge blob of yellow taffy back and forth between them until it took on a thick snakelike shape. It even curled and twisted like a real snake. Next to them a machine sliced purple taffy into perfect squares, and another wrapped the squares in small pieces of wax paper faster than you could blink. Bags of sugar and large containers of corn syrup, cornstarch, and butter passed from worker to worker.

  “My best friend, Magpie, would love this place,” Daisy said, whistling appreciatively.

  “Who would like to pull some taffy?” Fran asked, slinging the roll of yellow taffy—now as thick as Logan’s leg and twice as long—onto a metal hook on the wall. She made it look easy, but the last time Logan tried to lift a roll onto the hook by himself, he’d sunk down to his knees under the weight. Pretty embarrassing.

  “I’ll help!” Daisy offered. She laid her pocketbook on the floor and hurried forward. Fran handed her a pair of rubber gloves and then instructed her to hold on to each end of the taffy roll, sling the middle over the hook, then mush the two ends together. Daisy did it with ease. Fran showed her how to pull the taffy until it was taut, then to sling it back over the hook until it softened up.

  “This will put air into the taffy to give it a lighter texture,” Max explained as they watched Daisy, who didn’t seem to be struggling under the weight of the taffy at all. “And the friction helps deepen the flavor.”

  Daisy kept pulling and slinging as if she could do it all day. Logan put his hand on his upper arm and squeezed. Not mushy exactly, but not rock-hard either. He made a mental note to start doing push-ups.

  Max must have been thinking the same thing (abou