How candy canes are made

Hand-made candy canes were once bent by workers, and over a fifth of them broke before a priest invented a machine for it.

stations: 7
things upstream: 49
raw sources: 14
steps from the ground: 10

The short version

Water, sugar and corn syrup boil to a thick yellow syrup. Peppermint and starch are kneaded in, and machines stretch the mass around a post until trapped air bubbles turn it white. Workers lay red stripes on a heavy log, rollers spin it thin, and belts twist in the spiral. Big factories cut and wrap the sticks before they bend them.

Boil the syrup

A batch of water, sugar and corn syrup boils down to a thick yellow syrup.

Goes in
Sugar Corn syrup Water
Knead in the mint

Mint flavor is mixed into starch and kneaded into the hot candy until the mass is even. A smaller batch is set aside and dyed dark red.

Goes in
Corn starch Pigment
Stretch it white

The mass is stretched again and again around a central pole. This forces in tiny air bubbles, and they scatter light, so yellow turns bright white.
Lay on the stripes

The white candy is packed into a log that can be as thick as a person's waist. Red bands go along it lengthwise, partly by hand, and workers in heat-resistant gloves handle hot tubes of 100 pounds.
Spin down and twist

Rollers spin the log thinner, keeping its proportions, so the wide stripe shrinks to a fine line. Metal wheels move the rope along while special belts twist it into a spiral.
Cut and shrink-wrap

The rope is cut into straight sticks that are wrapped in plastic while still warm.

Goes in
Plastic wrap
Bend the crook

In large-scale production the shepherd's hook comes last, formed after the stick is already wrapped. Factory canes tend to be thinner than handmade ones.

End of the lineCandy cane

Worth repeating

Before automation, breakage often ran over 20 percent because the canes had to be bent by hand as they came off the line.
Gregory Harding Keller patented his twisting-and-cutting machine in 1957. He was an ordained Catholic priest working in his family's candy factory.
The popular story that a choirmaster in Cologne invented the shape in 1670 is likely apocryphal, as no references to it appear before the mid-20th century.
The earliest known appearance of the words candy cane is in an 1866 short story.