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 | Wednesday, July 10, 2002 |
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Lifestyle Candy Shoppe will offer old favorites Kristen Kromer
When it came to candy, Sophia Gerkensmeyer knew her sweet stuff. From 1929 to 1940, she made chocolates for the Davenport Hotel's Candy Craft Co., and quickly rose from "dipper" to "chocolate forelady." She also worked at several other Spokane candy stores, making peanut brittle, taffy and brandy cherries. But a comment from a customer about the peanut brittle's stickiness (she hated how it stuck to her teeth) got Gerkensmeyer thinking about how to improve peanut brittle. She bought a marble slab from the Davenport in 1951 -- $20 for a 32-inch square -- and began a try-and-taste process for creating a new type of peanut brittle. By mixing peanut butter and lots of air into the brittle batter, she came up with something soft, sweet and light -- like peanut brittle blended with a cloud. That was the birth of "soft peanut butter brittle." A close relation is another Gerkensmeyer creation: Bruttles. She left the peanuts out of th Gerkensmeyer made soft peanut butter brittle until she was 90; she died last year at 103. But now the pillow-like peanutty treats will be available once again, thanks to Gerkensmeyer's niece, Carol Measel. Measel will run the Davenport Candy Shoppe in the newly renovated Davenport Hotel. And pieces of the soft peanut butter brittle will be the Davenport's turn-down treats. Instead of chocolates on their pillows, Davenport guests will receive a bit of soft peanut butter brittle on a small saucer, delivered room-service style. At age 10, Measel started working by her aunt Sophia's side, learning the intricacies of pulling peanut brittle. Today, at 50, she still uses her aunt's $20 marble slab as the place to mix brittle batters with air, helping them attain just the right loft. At Christmastime, Measel and her aunt would make about 300 pounds of the Butterfinger-like soft peanut butter brittle for friends and family. For many, the treat is a holiday tradition. " (Aunt Sophia) always said, `When I'm gone next year, I want you to keep doing it. I just want you to make candy for friends and family,"' Measel said. "I'm sure she's up there thinking this is her dream come true." But candy-making hasn't always been Measel's profession. She taught third grade at Opportunity Elementary School, managed doctors' offices and worked as a lab assistant at Hollister-Stier. In 1988, she decided to give the candy business a serious try. She bought a business called Huckles, and soon had 100 salespeople across the United States selling the signature huckleberry candy and her own soft peanut butter brittle. She was featured in catalogs and shops around the world and kept up a hectic pace for four years. But after hiring people who she said had different business ethics than hers, it got to be too much. She closed Huckles in 1992. Measel still made huge batches of the soft peanut butter brittle for the holidays, though, and had thought often about getting back into the candy business. But she made a promise to herself to keep the venture close to home. That opportunity came when she heard that developer Walt Worthy was reopening the Davenport. She thought she could keep her day job at an insurance company and just make Bruttles on the side. "I thought Walt should have a Bruttle on every pillow because of the (candy's) history," she said. As Measel was making queries about whether turn-down treats had been chosen for the hotel rooms, someone had brought Worthy a Davenport relic they found in an attic. It was a chocolate box printed with the tagline "Chocolates worthy of the Davenport." As Worthy started searching for more information about the hotel's old chocolate shop, Measel came up with an elaborate presentation -- which included lots of samples -- to woo Worthy. "We'd love being turned down by the Davenport," she told him. The candy, and its history, was too tasty to pass up. Quickly, Measel, her husband and their two children added a large garage and attached the candy shop to their Spokane Valley home. Carol Measel started using it June 17, quit her job and has been in full candy-making mode ever since. The four-person crew can make 250 pounds of soft peanut butter brittle and 2,500 Bruttles a day. Measel said she won't let the business grow so much that the candies are mass produced. "I don't want to compromise the taste," she said. "That's why we still hand-wrap every piece -- I don't want to change anything Aunt Sophia did." The hardest part so far has been not knowing how much candy to make. Measel has planned for 1,200 pounds of soft peanut butter brittle, 6,000 Bruttles and hundreds of pounds of the other offerings. She's gearing up to give out about 5,000 free samples on the Davenport's opening day Monday. "But it's worth it," she said, "to get it in people's mouths and get them to taste it." •Kristen Kromer can be reached at (509) 459-5593, or by e-mail at kristenk@spokesman.com
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