A while back, the folks at NewsCenter1 in Rapid City featured our shop in their Connect With Us series, under a headline we have no argument with: “Need a chocolate fix? Turtle Town is for you!”

Better yet, the segment itself is on NewsCenter1’s YouTube channel — here it is:

For anyone who found us through it, or anyone wondering what a camera crew finds when it walks into a candy kitchen in the Black Hills, here’s the honest tour.

What the cameras see

The first thing is the smell, which unfortunately doesn’t broadcast. Chocolate tempering in the melters, caramel cooking in copper kettles, and on a good morning, English toffee cooling on the marble slab. We’ve been making candy this way since 1977 — small batches, dipped and finished by hand, no shortcuts that would make the work easier and the candy worse.

The case up front holds what the kitchen turned out that week: sea salt caramels finished with flake salt, a long row of truffles, fudge cut thick, taffy pulled in more flavors than strictly necessary, and our bear paws — pecans, cashews, or almonds under caramel and chocolate, the thing people drive back into the Hills for. There’s a sugar-free case too, because nobody should have to sit out a candy store.

Two shops, one kitchen

Visitors sometimes meet us twice without realizing it. The Hill City shop at 205 Main St is the year-round home base, four miles from Mount Rushmore as the crow flies and a good deal prettier the long way. The Keystone shop at 117 Winter St opens for the season, three miles from the mountain, for everyone who worked up an appetite looking at four presidents.

We’re grateful every time someone points a camera or a pen our way — it’s a long way from a copper kettle in Hill City to a news broadcast. But the best way to cover this story has always been in person. Come get your chocolate fix; we’ll be at the kettles.