Local Buzz, The Lab
Inside Dixie's Candy Kitchen: New Bursts Taffy
Inspired by the bold, yet refreshing flavors of mouth-salivating fruits and the delightful chewiness of saltwater taffy, we set out to craft our own infused chewy treats. When crafting this product, it was important to us that we preserve the flavor without compromising the texture. After all, so many other infused chews out there seem more like fruit leather or gumdrops than true taffy.
We spent months crafting this product to perfection. The result was our new Dixie Bursts – a THC-infused hand-pulled taffy that's bursting with flavor and has a pleasant, chewy texture.
It was love at first bite.
Behind the Scenes Tour of Making Bursts Taffy
Taking us on the behind-the-scenes tour of the Dixie Candy Kitchen is Kristyl. She is a production supervisor here at Dixie that has been involved in crafting Bursts since the beginning when she and Sam sorted through a list of nearly 100 taffy flavors. She walked us through everything that goes into making the latest and greatest edible in Colorado. You, too, will soon learn about the journey the Dixie "Taffy Team" takes each day to craft Bursts Pulled Taffy.
Preparing the Taffy Ingredients
Step 1: The magic in the making begins before most people's alarms even go off at 6 am. The ingredients are weighed out and start heating in the copper kettle.
Heating these ingredients must be done with precision. As things start to heat up, it's all too easy to let the mixture get too hot. Perfecting the temperature is a science. And it's an important step in the process. If the mixture gets too hot, it will impact the texture, but we won't find this out until later in the process.
Step 2: Next, we mix in our secret ingredient – pure, CO2 extracted THC oil.
Step 3: After the THC oil is added, we match the bold flavor with bold color. When the batch reaches the right hue, we pour the warm, velvety mixture onto a tray to let it cool. Once the mixture reaches the right consistency, we separate and stretch it out a bit. Doing this will make it easier for the part that comes next.
Pulling Bursts Taffy
Step 4: Between 9 and 9:30, we are ready to start pulling the taffy. Hand pulling taffy – that sounds fun right? The Dixie team thought so too. When we first watched Kristyl, "The Pioneer of Pulling" at Dixie, we were all fascinated and excited to try it ourselves.
But upon the first try, everyone started to realize this wasn't as easy as Kristyl made it look.
What's so hard about it?
First, you have to throw it up over the hook. This alone is no easy task. It's nothing like tossing a toilet paper roll over a tree, as you may remember from your teenage years. It's more like using all your might to launch a medicine ball up against a wall.
Then, just like the medicine ball workout, you have to do this repeatedly. Only with taffy pulling, you have to continue holding it while you simultaneously throw it back up and over the hook just so. After several minutes, this begins to feel like a workout.
If you don't throw, hold and pull "just so," then you'll end up with a big ol' ball in your hands and not a nice, long rope of taffy. This will happen to 90% of people when they first start pulling. But on the contrary, it comes naturally to some. Like Kristyl, who got it on her second try. "Stephen and Brad also set the bar high for our team and make it look easy," she says.
Several minutes into pulling the taffy, you have to start paying close attention to the consistency to know when it's done. This can be tricky because if you pull it too much, it will be dry. But if you pull it too little, it won't maintain its shape.
Crafting and Shaping
Step 5: After it's pulled, we roll out the taffy into long, skinny ropes. This, too, is easier said than done. It's actually quite difficult to roll the taffy out into long, skinny ropes without it ending up too skinny in some spots and too fat in others. "This requires patience and attention to detail," says Dixie's expert taffy roller, Toni.
Step 6: Once the taffy is rolled out, we measure the rolls and cut them into pillow-shaped pieces. Now, we are ready to proceed with the final touches.
Step 7: After using an edible ink printer to mark each piece with a THC symbol, we send it through the flow wrapper to individually wrap each piece before they are packaged up and sent off to the dispensary.
Read more about our packaging recyclability and other sustainability efforts of our GO GREEN Program.
https://dixieelixirs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Flow-Wrapper-In-action-.mp4
Though the process is fun, the most exciting part is still the final product. While they may be delicious all year round, we're particularly excited to have them available to you just in time for warmer weather – they're the perfect summer candy. Unlike chocolate, they won't melt in the sun and since they're all individually wrapped, Bursts are easy to take on a hike or on the boat. All three of the flavors – blue raspberry, strawberry, and mango – are delicious and refreshing on a warm, summer day. Luckily, you can find your own favorite, because Dixie Bursts are now available in assorted flavor packs all over Colorado!