Six Spoons Chocolatier
An Enfield candy-making legend has been reborn in New Hartford. Emily King, a former “Crand’s kid,” has carried forward the half-century-long Crand’s Candy Castle tradition in her new shop, Six Spoons, located in the Marandino’s shopping plaza on Route 44.
Since March, she has sold handcrafted chocolates, fudge, confections, artisan ice cream and traditional drinking chocolate that have already drawn accolades.
“Six Spoons is quite possibly more magical than the Crand's Candy Castle of my childhood,” wrote Bryan Kelly, who recently drove his family from Hartford to New Hartford to sample the wares. “Emily King, the owner of Six Spoons, exceeded my expectations with every detail of her shop. … From the glass counters’ full of fudges and chocolate barks to the beautifully displayed chocolate covered espresso beans and, oh, be still my heart –the Peanut Butter Crisps. The same recipe from Crand's. … Emily is an incredible soul with a heart for family, kids and sweets.”
Crand’s set the standard for generations of young people who worked within its walls. “That’s where I learned everything,” said King. “We made everything there, even candy canes and ribbon candy. I learned things most people never have.”
By the time Crand’s closed in 2001, Kelly had married and moved to Winsted. With a toddler in her household and well aware of the hours the business demanded, she did not want to buy Crand’s when it closed. “But I knew I would get back into it sometime,” she said.
Now, with her four children old enough to care for themselves—and sometimes help in the shop—she has gone back to her dream. “That’s where the name ‘Six Spoons’ comes from,” she explained. “My husband and I are both the youngest of four and we have four children—so six spoons in a kettle.”
“I have been looking for the right place and this spring decided to set up at Marandino’s,” she continued.
At Crand’s the chocolates were mixed in giant copper kettles over an open flame. “I don’t have that in New Hartford,” she said, but all the chocolates are still handcrafted. She sticks to small batches “with minimal ingredients and manipulation.”
She said there are many subtleties to creating chocolate candies. “It’s time, temperature and agitation,” she said. “You can be half a degree off and get ‘bloom’—that’s the grayish color you may have notice on candy bars and not even known what it is. It tastes the same, it’s just as wonderful, but it is not as lovely to look at. Chocolate should have a nice shine to it and a snap when you bite into it.”
As experienced as she is, mistakes do happen. “Last week, I made some peppermint patties and I got them too hot,” she said. “They had a swirl on them. When something like that happens, I put them on sale in a bag of ‘oopsies.’ They taste as good but aren’t as pretty.”
She explained that there is a difference between a chocolatier and a chocolate maker. “A chocolate maker is said to be ‘beans to bar,’” she said. “But a chocolatier just makes his own blend and fillings. I make a blend of chocolates and I’m not a beans-to-bars shop.”
Seasonally, she offers ice cream of her own crafting. Hurry, because Friday spells the end of this year’s offering until next year. “I get sweet cream ice cream from Grass Roots Creamery in Granby,” she said. “It is not vanilla because vanilla already has a strong flavor. I take the sweet cream ice cream and mix in my own flavors.”
The tastes she serves up often take customers down memory’s lane. “You can often find something here that you haven’t had for years and years,” she said, among them Penuche fudge, a brown-sugar based fudge. “Sometimes I make it with pecans and sometimes walnuts,” she said. “They’ll stand there and just close their eyes and remember. The sense of taste and smell is so str
She recalled one older woman who had looked for a chocolate pecan fudge her mother made. Tasting King’s fudge, the woman said, “I’ve been looking for 40 years for a taste of my mother. “Those are the things that make it really cool and more than just a shop on the corner,” King said.
Six Spoons is located at 141 Main Street, New Hartford; 860-238-7505. It is open 10AM-7PM, Monday through Thursday; 10 AM-9 PM., Friday and Saturday, and 12- 5 PM, Sunday.
