Rosalind Candy Castle Thrives in ‘Chocolate Belt’ of Western Pa.
New Brighton, PA – Jim Crudden stirred the day’s first batch of peanut brittle for a few minutes in a big copper kettle, then handed off to his son Mike. Even at 300 degrees, the candy was so stiff that mixing required multiple hands.
They lifted the 3-foot-wide kettle and hooked it to chains from the ceiling, so the 55-pound batch could be tipped out and spread with spatulas on a long marble slab. As the mixture cooled, the Cruddens and two helpers kneaded and stretched the peanut brittle to make it as thin as possible.
“Demand for peanut brittle gains leading up to Halloween and through Thanksgiving, but once Christmas hits, you can’t sell it,” said Jim Crudden, president of Rosalind Candy Castle in New Brighton, a 100-year-old candy store that prides itself on maintaining old traditions: cooking all its candy from scratch, by hand, from decades-old recipes. A specialty is hand-dipping chocolates without the aid of machinery, a rarity in the industry these days, experts say.
