Candy Dish Blog

Not only do I love this photo, but I think it is a great combination of traditional items people use to express love – flowers and candy. My lovely wife has done me the honor of sticking with me through 14 years of marriage as of this previous Monday, so a photo of some candy flowers is the very least I could get her. Actually, after I photographed them, we shared one that I dropped and cracked. It seemed only fitting that we put it out of its misery. It was delicious!

These lollipops were made by the Melville Candy Company and are beautiful – true works of art for both the eyes and the taste buds.

This type of photo presents some technical problems. How do you light it brightly enough to get the white background but not so bright that the candy gets washed out? How do you get the lollipops to appear to be standing up? What f-stop, shutter speed and ISO combination works best and how do you adjust for the mixture of light colors found in the studio? Well, if I answered all those questions I would be out of business as a photographer.

However, what I can disclose is that every photographer has a slightly different recipe for his or her special sauce to make great photos. My challenge to you is to photograph some candy in your own studio and we can talk about how to make it into a better photo.

Do you want your candy photos featured here? Submit them to the Candy Dish Blog Flickr group. We want to see your candy photos and so does the rest of the world!

Susan S, Tori, Susan and Carl celebrate one year of blogging about candy by raiding NCA's Candy Store!

As Carl mentioned yesterday, the Candy Dish blog just celebrated its one year anniversary.  In that time, we’ve published more than 375 posts.  Since we don’t normally post anything on weekends (that’s when Tori attends Virginia Tech football games, Carl takes photos, Susan S. hikes at Sugarloaf Mountain, and I exhibit at craft shows), that means we average more than one post a day.  And that, loyal readers, means you’ve been super busy keeping up with all that reading.  

I’m sure you’ve read every single post along the way.  Right?  Well, just in case you missed any, here are the top ten posts of the past year:

10. The World’s Top Ten Best Selling Candies (probably self explanatory)

9. Fun Facts About Gum (ditto)

8. Storing Candy for Maximum Shelf Life (keep that candy long after you put away the Halloween costumes)

7. Thank Ya Easter Bunny (a contest)

6. Chocolate Wedding Cakes (for anyone keeping score, we went with chocolate CUPCAKES!)

5. Variations in Candy (a guide to normal variations that occur in the manufacturing process)

4. Photo Wednesday: Susan’s Wedding Candy Buffet (it was hit a the wedding and on the blog)

3. Fun Facts About Easter Candy (you can probably guess what this is about – chocolate pumpkins and candy canes)

2. Peep Show – Annual Peeps Diorama Contest (we just can’t get enough marshmallow art)

and the number one post during our first year of life was …

1. Free Chocolate Fridays – Thanks, Mars! (because if there is one thing better than chocolate, it’s free chocolate!)

Thanks your support this year.  Keep reading, and please let us know if there are topics you’d like us to cover more (or less).

One year ago today, Candy Dish Blog had its first post. Since then, it’s been a whirlwind of sweetness and delight. We have four regular contributors, have sponsored at least five candy giveaway contests, have had one guest blogger and Susan even had the opportunity to be a guest blogger because of our work here. In short, it has been a great year.

What can you look forward to in the coming year? We have several goals:

• More contests. We want to give you stuff. Yummy stuff.
• More authors. We have a great new food scientist on staff who wants to write about candy making, as well as introduce some of the science behind candy and chocolate. Other new authors may be on the horizon as well.
• More social in the social media. We want to interact with you more, so keep on the lookout for more opportunities to join the conversation. Heck, come by for a cup of coffee and we can do it in person.

We have other plans too and you are going to see some changes here in the coming year, so we hope you will stick around and even bring your friends.

What do you want to see here in the coming year?

Cake Topper by SpiritMama.

The Milton Hershey School, located, as you might guess, in Hershey, PA, is celebrating a very special anniversary this year. For 100 years, the school, originally an orphanage, has been providing children with educational and life opportunities that have made a huge difference in their lives. Today, the Milton Hershey School is much more than an orphanage.

A little bit of history of the founding of the school, in 1909, from the “Our Heritage” historical timeline:

Deed of Trust is signed in New York City to create Hershey Industrial School. Milton Hershey and his wife Catherine established a boarding school for orphan boys to be located at the Homestead, Milton Hershey’s birthplace. In 1918, Milton Hershey placed $60 million dollars (his entire fortune) in Trust for the School. In 1951 the Hershey Industrial School changed its name to the Milton Hershey School.

This is incredible. Think about the endowment you could establish today with that much money. But in today’s dollars, that $60 million is roughly equivalent to $858 million, according to the consumer price index. That amount of money is staggering, especially considering that it was his entire fortune he set aside for the school. That type of giving is something rare, something very special.

Today we are 52 days away from the official anniversary. In conjunction with the anniversary, the school is setting itself an ambitious goal. It plans to expand from 1800 students to 2100, which means adding or expanding facilities in a very dramatic way. In addition, Hershey is currently looking for students and staff as well!

You will see a few more posts on the Milton Hershey School as our countdown continues. In the meantime, go to the school’s site and read about the good work they do. Hershey is known for fun and games but there is another side to the company – a heritage of education and giving for the good of society.