Monterey’s Carousel Candies: Making Sweets From Scratch for 50 years

Monterey, CA – As Valentine’s Day rolls around, Monterey-bound visitors are setting their sights on romantic candle-lit dinners, wine trails, elegant parties and chocolate-and-wine-pairing events. Then there are those of us who still crave an old-fashioned box of chocolates. I’ve got two words for you: Carousel Candies.

Actually, “box of chocolates” doesn’t begin to cover it. Walking into the cotton-candy-pink Fisherman’s Wharf fixture with a hard-working taffy puller in the window is instant overload. You have to clear your mind and focus on one section at a time: The warm butter-toffee almonds and cashews by the door. The seemingly endless varieties of fudge, turtlets, brittle and candied apples, as well as Italian torrone and peanut butter cups, in the glass case. The bags of saltwater taffy and caramel or cheese corn hanging on the racks. The freezer in the back that stocks Dreyer’s ice cream and their own frozen chocolate-dipped bananas. The packages, currently dominated by heart-shaped boxes, on the shelves behind the glass-walled room where confectioner Rick Elves mans the machine that takes a 40-pound slab of freshly made taffy and spits out bite-sized, paper-wrapped treats.