Photo Courtesy of Alanna Boland

“My family has this impression that I really like sweets. I do really like sweets – just not to the extent that they believe. Anyway, because of this impression, when I was about 13 years old, my mother asked me, ‘Instead of buying candy, why don’t you just make it?’ She was joking, because what mother actually wants their children making their own candy? There’s really no way to regulate it then – you just make more candy when you want it. She was joking, but I was thought it was a great idea and immediately looked up a recipe. It’s fun! Whatever candy flavoring you like, it all has the same base. Then you just pour in the candy flavoring and whatever color you want it to be at the very end. Now– this is a very important part – the candy color does not have to match the flavor. So, if you really want to mess people up, you can make cherry candy green and mint candy red and give them out around Christmas. I went to a huge high school – 3,700 people – and I would actually bring these tins of candy and give them out to absolutely everyone. Interestingly enough, because it was such a big high school, half of them asked, ‘Does this cost anything?’ or, ‘Did you put drugs in it?’ I was like, ‘No, I just made a lot of candy and now I’m sharing it.’ A batch of hard candy equals the amount of candy that fills a cookie sheet – that is, like, three big mason jars for two batches of candy, so there’s too much of it to make when I don’t have a huge audience to eat it. Because of this, I don’t make it as much anymore, but it used to be a big thing and now I have some new flavors to try out once I get home.”