DISH
Bob & Carol
with Maribeth Maloney
When I was in junior high I had a friend named Carol Merry. We were very different in personality type and levels of fastidiousness but hit it off nonetheless. We were linked together through the "keep your enemies close" theory by a certain boy, Dave Warnick. He was her boyfriend in the 7th grade, dumped her for me in the 8th grade, and we each had another round with him before he dumped us both for good in the 9th grade.

Though it sounds cliché, Carol was a young Martha Stewart. She was even more Martha than Martha. She spent her time sewing, cooking and doing things crafty enough to boggle the average pubescent mind. But no one batted an eye when she'd announce she was preparing Surf and Turf for her high school boyfriend, complete with drawn butter and béarnaise sauce. She threw me a Sweet 16 party - a ridiculously grand affair by teenage standards. With her parents out of the house on that night, she tried her hand at being a cocktail party sophisticate; she mixed up drinks with every kind of liquor she found in the cabinets. The birthday girl abstained, but those who sampled her booze bombs had their first gruesome turn at worshiping the porcelain god.

When I left for college, Carol made me a teddy bear to take, "Barrington C. Bainsworth." I still have Sir Bainsworth and when I look at him I'm still amazed by Carol's professional level craftsmanship. She went on to junior college, finishing school for girls with more of a knack for setting a table than reading a book, and we lost touch. But I always think of her each holiday season when candy canes begin surfacing.

Carol, of course, made her own. She'd spend hours in the kitchen with her candy thermometer, stretching out rods of molten white and red sugar and hand-twisting them into canes. I thought she was nuts but she seemed to derive a relaxing pleasure from the experience. Now that I'm nutty in my own way - in the habit of whipping up frittatas at midnight, just because - I understand the madness of people with the compulsion to cook. Yet given that every candy cane recipe I've seen suggests having six people on hand to assist, I know for certain that Carol cornered the market in compulsive cooking; normal people wouldn't bother.

But confectioners commissioned by the choirmaster of the Cologne Cathedral in Germany would, and they did. The candy cane was borne from the need to stifle restless, yappy children during monumentally long living crche masses. The original bribes were passed out to young fidgets in 1670, and while they did have crooks, they were neither striped nor peppermint flavored; they were simply white hardened sugar sticks. The crook was intended to symbolize either a shepherd's walking stick or an upside down "J" for Jesus, or both. But none of the other morsels of folklore are substantiated. The notion that the red stripes were meant to signify the blood of Christ and that the peppermint flavor was intended to mirror "hyssop," a cleansing herb referred to in the Old Testament, are the result of revisionist candy history. Neither the coloring nor the flavoring was altered until after 1900.

The clergymen's custom of de-blabbing pint sized parishioners with the white stick treat spread throughout Europe and eventually made its way across the Atlantic. The first American reference to candy canes was in 1847 when a German- Swedish immigrant named August Imgard decorated the Christmas tree in his Wooster, Ohio house with them. No one knows for sure who's owed credit for the mysterious addition of the stripes, but what is known is that Christmas cards predating 1900 pictured only white canes, whereas post-1900 cards feature the red and white archetypal confection that's come to symbolize Christmas as much as Santa.

In 1919, Bob McCormack, a candy maker in Albany, Georgia, began making the first commercially produced candy canes at McCormack's Famous Candy Company. Even though the process of mass producing the handmade canes was painstaking and shortages imposed by World War I rendered the cost of sugar prohibitive, Bob was a success. So much so that he not only branched out into coconut candies, taffy and peanut treats, but in 1924 he also changed the company name to "Bob's Candy Company," later even pulling a "Barneys New York" and dropping the apostrophe.

McCormack proved to be much more than just a candy man: he was an innovator. The demand for his canes being what it was, he wanted to automate the production process for efficiency and to increase supply. Lucky for him, his brother-in-law, Gregory Keller, was a priest and an inventor and in 1950 they perfected a machine with automated pullers that twisted the candy into spiral strips and cut them into precise five inch measures. But even with this advancement, the process remained flawed. The Georgia humidity necessitated immediate shipment or the canes would become gummy and the red coloring would bleed. Bob's solution: the invention of a machine that sealed the canes in moisture-proof wrappers. Yet Bob's mission was still not quite complete; the matter of breakage had yet to be tackled. But he was more than a twotrick pony and the cure for cracking was his patented breakproof, keyhole packaging.

The 1950s were the golden years for Bobs Candy Company which annually produced 1.8 million sticks with revenues of $3.3 million. In 1956, the company was hailed as the largest candy cane producer in the world. Ever wonder why there are candy displays at the check-out areas of grocery stores? Yes siree, Bob. (He probably invented that, too.) The father of impulse buying knew that everyone passed through the check-out, so he convinced A & P store managers to place candy displays directly in customers' faces as they were about to pay.

Sadly for Bobs and the rest of the candy cane industry, the cost of sugar in this country has been tantamount to a bag of coal. The U.S. price is 23.5 cents a pound, whereas the average price in the rest of the world is 10.9 cents. In 2005, the Department of Commerce reported that sugar costs were a major factor in the offshore movement of manufacturing facilities because sugar prices represent a larger share of total production costs than labor. Although 90 percent of candy canes produced globally are consumed in the United States, most are now made in Mexico, where the price of sugar is two-thirds the U.S. price. Adding to Bobs niche business woes has been the barrage of heavy hitters with candy cane flavored products, including Hershey's Kisses, Oreos, Starburst and Jelly Belly.

In 2005, Bobs was acquired by Farley's &

Sathers Candy Company and Bob himself has long since gone to the big candy cane in the sky. But chances are good that the canes you buy this Christmas are his. Bobs Candy produces the reindeer's share of the 1.76 billion made yearly, enough to stretch from Santa Claus, Indiana to North Pole, Arkansas and back, 32 times.

According to the National Confectioners' Association, candy canes have a shelf life of a year; waste not want not - slap the spares back into those sturdy patented boxes and you'll be all set for next year.

I WHITE CHOCOLATE CANDY CANE COOKIES
This one's for Ted & Alice-
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2   cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup confectioners' sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 8 squares (1-ounce each) white chocolate
• 1/2 cup finely crushed candy canes

In a medium-sized bowl, combine flour and salt. In a large bowl, beat butter and confectioners' sugar with an electric mixer until smooth. Beat in egg and peppermint and vanilla extracts. Beat in flour mixture. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate 1 hour. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Shape dough into 1-inch balls and place on lightly greased baking sheets. Bake for 10 - 12 minutes, until bottoms are lightly browned. Remove to wire racks to cool completely. Melt white chocolate over a double-boiler. Use a pastry brush to coat the top of each cookie with melted chocolate; dip gently into crushed candy canes and place on waxed paper until set. Makes about 3 dozen.