About
Welcome to SpiceCandies!
SpiceCandies is NOT a company – I do not make or sell candies. This site is dedicated to teaching the art of natural candy making, sweets, ice creams and so on. It is FREE – and I hope you will find it useful.
Since I startes this hobby in the summer of 2010 I’ve developed well over 100 flavors – all natural! I have well over 240 pages of candy experiments documented – and more and more questions and tests I wish to do…
How do I pick which candy recipes to put on my webpage? I upload only recipes that my YouTube channel shows there is interest in (or recipes that were requested by mail). Feel free to ask for a recipe if you can’t find it here!
Current status
Sadly these days with the kids in their teens, a day job and only 24 hours a day… I get very little spare time to make candies…. but things will improve slowly and I will do more candy research and development. For up-to-date images see my instagram account.
How it all started…
In 2010 my son was in Kindergarten. He came up to me one day (it was Friday, my regular pick-up day) and told me “I’m going to talk to friends – hold this candy for me” – “OK, go talk to your friends” I said (while melting in the HOT summer sun). I sat on a stone in the shade (still hot!) and looked at the candy. That was a rooster candy… I remembered having these as a kid – it was nice and red and then I flipped it and took a good look at the ingredients: Sugar, Corn syrup, Flavorings, Dye: Ponceu. My hair was standing in rows on my back and also on top of my head.
Ponceu is currently considered a safe dye today – but at the time (and now too) I didn’t care – I knew Ponceu from my lab work (Biology) and it is used to dye proteins in nitro-cellulose membranes. The Ponceu MSDS just ran itself (no sound track) at the back of my mind. Definitely something I didn’t want my child to eat! So… When my kid returned I told him “you know what? Let’s trade – I’ll buy you a different candy at the store. I don’t like this one”. He agreed (smart kid – he chose a large ice cream) and I got back home and started experimenting with candy making.
“There has got to be a way to make the candies that are children friendly” I said to myself
The rest you can see if you check this website… 🙂
Not to brag, but… I have made hundreds of experimental candies since. I have documented them all – well over 240pages in my notebook describing all these experiments, their results, thoughts, ideas and failures [we learn more from failure than success!]. I have made over 100 successful natural flavored candies, some in flavores that didn’t exist before. And, I’m still having more puzzles to solves, answers to pick and topics to explore – and most of all: it’s fascinating and it’s FUN!
About the author
If you are THAT interested – scroll to the bottom of this page ( why? this website is not about me, it’s about candies!).
Future plans
I’ve been asked many times if I can sell my candies. I’m sorry to say “No, not at the moment”.
Due to a basic financial math I cannot make candies in my country. Therefore, I cannot make and sell candies legally. I have been asked about it – but for now I don’t have a way to make them and no factory that I’ve found that is interested in a cooperation. Instead, I give them away, usually to my work colleagues (that LOVE to come to my desk for a sweet treat from time to time). But I hope to change that in the future and be able to sell my candies. Some candy recipes I reserve to myself (e.g. brownie candies, Reese’s cups hard candies and toffee, etc – usually some very complex candies that took me months to figure out) but apart from that my recipes are free for non-commercial makers (i.e. private DIY’s). If you want a recipe – just email me 🙂
People ask me: So what do you think of cooperation? can I ask for a recipe? Can you help me make candies?
My answer: Yes, I’d be happy to!
Small or large, a question or call for help: If you have a simple question – don’t be shy!; if you would like me to teach you to make a special candy for your loved one(s); if you want to cooperate with me at any level (e.g. youtube channels); if you want to get/expand into the candy business and want my help…
Sure! I’d love to help.
Just email me: saar@spicecandies.com
Now, with your permission, I’d like to list below three important points about this website and my candies.
Spicecandies – did you mean Spice Candies as in spicy (hot) candies?
No. I chose the name because I use only natural ingredients such as organic spices, herbs and fruits in my candies. So it’s not a “Spicy candies” channel but a “Spice based candies”channel (or website, in this case).
For example, my Orange candies (seen to the right) are made of white sugar, corn syrup, water and…fresh Oranges. Same goes for my orange ice cream… no orange flavor, no orange dye – I use real Oranges or at worst case scenario – organic Orange jam (preferably mine).
Why do companies use “food” dyes and synthetic flavoring –
Most of the people wonder why doesn’t the big factories use natural ingredients. I think this is because the industry prefers the much simpler (and low cost) candy making method that works for all the candy flavors they want to make. To do this, they add tiny amounts of highly concentrated (mostly synthetic) flavoring agent, then similar amounts of dye. These tiny amounts of additives allow the candy to behave the same way – no matter what kind of candy is being made. Making a candy using fresh, natural, ingredients means that I have to add a lot of the chosen natural ingredient to the candy to make it taste well. The large amount of natural additives we use in our candies changes how the candy behaves and forces me to follow it’s rules rather than it following mine. Hence, it’s going to be hard to make these using standard industrial equipment.
OK, so your candies are natural, so what is the con?
The downside is that natural ingredients sometimes give the candy a bit of a coarse texture and makes me – the maker work quite a lot to find the optimal conditions for each and every candy. That’s a lot of batches going down the drain (to the garbage bin, actually), but the taste is natural and not a synthetic “like-” flavors that have nothing to do with (or very little of) their original fruity name. True – I still (for most, not all) use corn syrup and sugar – both are natural and are not “bad” for you – as long as you consume them in a reasonable manner (i.e. not too much). A candy a day will not hurt you – a bottle of soda that contains LOTS of corn syrup or sugar doesn’t really help your body.
About the author
I am a molecular virologist (i.e. I am a biologist that specializes in viruses and molecular biology). My Ph.D is in virology and mouse embryonic development and my Post-Doc was in virology and molecular biology using molecular and Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) tools to detect, sequence and analyze bovine, equine and poultry viruses. I currently work for a large company that produces poultry vaccines as an R&D researcher.
What else? Hobby wise I try to maintain two YT channels: spicecandies and smallathe. The latter channel is of my shop DIY: machine building, lathe/mill machining, jewelry making (for my wife), knife making, wood turning on a very small scale, resin art (e.g. making key chains). My other hobbies include glass-etching, reading (and writing, not published yet) sci-fi and other books, hiking in the woods, cooking, and so on [no, no TV time, except for a movie here and there and maybe a single series that my wife likes and drags me along].
If you must see me here is my LikedIn url (picture taken on my Ph.D. graduation day, Ben-Gurion University, 2011):
Feel free to contact me and suggest projects (joint projects are fun and I’d love to cooperate) or ask me questions and so on.
Thank you for visiting!
Yours sweetly,
Saar Tal
SpiceCandies
p.s. – If you’ve read so far – a special thanks for your time and endurance 🙂 !!!
