The Truffle Case, Flavor by Flavor

The Truffle Case, Flavor by Flavor

The first cold mornings change what people order. In July, folks ask for ice cream before the door has shut behind them. In November they come in with their collars up, stand in front of the chocolate case, and take their time. A lot of them land on the truffles.

There are twelve of them. Here is the case, flavor by flavor, and a little about how they get made.

What a truffle is, in our hands

A truffle is two things: a ganache center and a shell. Ganache is chocolate and cream warmed together and stirred until it stops looking like two ingredients and starts looking like one — thick, glossy, slow off the spoon. Whatever gives the truffle its name goes in while the ganache is still warm. The espresso. The raspberry. The key lime.

Then it cools and firms up overnight, gets scooped and rolled by hand, and goes into tempered chocolate one at a time. That little swirl on top of every truffle is simply where the dipper lifted it out. No mold made that. Somebody’s wrist did.

Small batches, the way candy has been made in our Keystone shop since 1977.

The chocolate end of the case

The Dark Chocolate truffle is the plainest thing in the case and the hardest to hide behind. Dark ganache, dark shell, nothing on top. If the chocolate is not good, you find out immediately. People who order it tend to order it again.

The Espresso is a ganache with real espresso in it, dipped in milk chocolate, with a whole coffee bean set on top so there is no guessing. The Peanut Butter is chunky on purpose — crunchy peanut chips worked right into the center, then milk chocolate over it.

The Raspberry is a raspberry milk chocolate ganache under milk chocolate, finished with red nonpareils. The Mint gets a light green shell and a milk chocolate drizzle, which is how you spot it from across the counter. And the Bear Paw truffle is a caramel milk chocolate ganache topped with pecan pieces — our bear paw candy, more or less, in a different shape.

The white chocolate end

This half of the case is where the color is. White chocolate takes flavor differently than dark does — brighter, less of an argument — so the fruit ones live over here.

• Champagne — champagne-infused white ganache, white shell, edible gold on top. The one people buy for New Year’s and anniversaries.
• Wedding Cake — vanilla cake flavor through a white ganache, dipped in white chocolate, finished with silver glitter.
• Cheesecake — white chocolate cheesecake ganache with graham cracker crumble over the top. It tastes like the real thing, which still surprises people.
• Key Lime — key lime white ganache, pale green shell, graham cracker crumble again.
• Lemon — lemon white ganache in a yellow shell. Sharp and clean.
• Dreamsicle — orange cream ganache, orange chocolate, white drizzle. Exactly what the name promises.

You can see all twelve on the truffle page. They run $3.50 apiece.

Coffee helps

Our Hill City shop has a European-style coffee bar, and in the cold months that is half the reason people come in. Order something hot, take two truffles, sit down for twenty minutes while the car warms up. The espresso truffle alongside a dark roast is the obvious pairing. The less obvious one is the key lime with black coffee, which works better than it has any right to.

A truffle is best at room temperature. If yours has been sitting in a cold car, give it ten minutes before you eat it. The ganache softens and the flavor opens up. Cold chocolate holds back.

Where to find them

The Hill City shop at 205 Main Street is open year-round, most days through the winter. Our Keystone shop at 117 Winter Street runs spring through October, so it is closed for the season now and will open again in the spring.

If you are coming for a particular flavor, call ahead. The case is made by hand in small batches, and what is in it changes week to week. If you are not coming at all, the online shop ships anywhere in the U.S., and orders over $50 ship free.

Either way, start with the dark chocolate. Then work your way across the case over the winter. There are worse projects.

Hill City in Winter: The Shop That Stays Open

Hill City in Winter: The Shop That Stays Open

The candy cases in Keystone went quiet at the end of October, the way they do every year. That shop runs spring through October, and 117 Winter Street will sit dark until the hills green up again.

The Hill City shop does not close. From November to April, 205 Main Street is the one with the lights on. If you live here, you already know that. If you are planning a winter trip, it is worth knowing where the chocolate is.

The Hills are a different place in November

The first thing that changes is the roads. Needles Highway closes to vehicles with the first snow of the season and stays closed until April 1 or later, depending on how the winter goes. Iron Mountain Road shuts down periodically when the snow comes faster than it can be cleared. The Wildlife Loop stays open year-round, though you drive it carefully. Custer State Park posts all of this on its scenic drives page, and it is worth a look the morning you head out rather than the week before.

What you get in trade is a quieter set of hills. Shorter drives. Parking anywhere you like. Bison standing in the open with nothing between you and them but cold air. The 1880 Train runs its Holiday Express out of the Hill City depot on select dates from late November into early January, which puts a good number of families on Main Street on winter evenings. Check their schedule before you build a day around it.

There is a coffee bar, and only here

Hill City has the European-style coffee bar. Keystone does not have one. On a January afternoon when the wind is coming down Main Street, that is the difference between a stop and a visit.

Espresso and dark chocolate were made for each other, and the counter is about eight feet from the chocolate case. Order something hot, pick two pieces out of the case, sit down. Most days that is the whole plan.

What we make when the buses stop coming

Summer is production. Winter is the part of the year where we make what the season asks for, in the small batches we have been making by hand since 1977.

Divinity is the clearest example. It is egg white and cooked sugar, beaten until it stops running and starts holding its shape, and it is honest about the weather. Beat it on a damp day and it will not set the way it should. Cold, dry Black Hills air in December is close to ideal. It comes out white, light, a little chewy at the center, and it tastes like a grandmother’s kitchen because for most people it was one.

Peppermint cremes show up around the same time. A soft mint center, dipped in dark chocolate, cool and clean after a heavy dinner. Fudge keeps going all winter, cut off the slab, and the caramels and bear paws do not take a season off either. Inventory moves, so if you are driving in for one particular thing, call ahead and we will set it aside.

Yes, people order ice cream in January

Every year someone is surprised that the ice cream case is still running in the middle of winter. It is, and it stays busy. Malts hold up fine in a cold month, and a sundae eaten indoors with snow on the window is its own small argument. The ice cream menu is the same one you would find in July.

If you are not getting up the hill this winter

Plenty of people who love this shop live nowhere near it. The online store runs all winter and ships anywhere in the United States, and orders over $50 ship free. Pack a box for someone who used to come through every summer, and it will land as something more than candy.

Finding us

• Hill City: 205 Main Street, open year-round, including right through the winter.
• Keystone: 117 Winter Street, closed for the season, back in the spring.
• Winter hours shift with the weather and the week. Call ahead if you are driving a long way.

The hills are quieter now. That is not a drawback. Come stand at the counter, let someone else shovel their own walk, and take your time choosing.

Shipping Black Hills Candy for the Holidays

Shipping Black Hills Candy for the Holidays

The last week of October is when the Hills go quiet. The tour buses stop coming through Keystone, the aspens have mostly let go, and our Winter Street shop closes up for the winter the way it has every year since we opened. Hill City stays. That shop at 205 Main Street is open through the snow, and from November until spring it is the only counter we have.

Which means that for most of the people who found us this summer, the next box of fudge is going to arrive in the mail. We have been shipping candy out of the Black Hills for a long time, and this is the time of year we start thinking about it hard. Here is what we have learned about getting it to your door in one piece.

What travels well

Winter is the easy season for mailing chocolate. In July we watch the forecast and sometimes hold an order until Monday so it is not sitting in a truck over a weekend. From November on, the cold does the work for us. Nearly everything on the shelf ships well once the weather turns.

Fudge is the best traveler we have. It is cut thick, wrapped, and it stays soft for a good while — a loaf that leaves here on Monday is still cutting cleanly the following week. Chocolate, penuche, maple, caramel pecan, and whatever else the kitchen has going that day.

English toffee is the other one we never worry about. It is hard, it is dry, and it keeps for weeks in a tin without losing its snap. Caramels and sea salt caramels do fine. Bear paws travel well once it is cold, and so do the truffles, though truffles are the one thing we would tell you to eat first rather than set aside until Christmas morning.

Taffy is forgiving and travels about as well as anything we make. Ice cream, malts, and the specialty sundaes do not travel at all. Those you have to come get, and in the winter that means Hill City.

The one that gets opened first

If you are mailing something to someone who has never been out here, send them the mountain. We pour a solid one-pound Mount Rushmore in milk chocolate, four faces and all, and it is usually $35. There is a dark chocolate version and a white chocolate one too.

It is a solid block of chocolate, so it holds up to the mail better than most novelty things do, and it is the box that gets opened first at the family table. Nobody wants to cut into it. Eventually somebody does.

When to order

Everything goes out USPS Priority Mail, which usually puts a box on a doorstep about three days after it leaves us. We generally need a day or two on our end to make and pack it, and December is the month that gets tight.

The Postal Service is recommending December 18 as the Priority Mail send-by date for deliveries in the lower 48 before Christmas. You can see their full list of dates for the other services. Our own advice is simpler: order by the second week of December and stop thinking about it. Candy made in a small kitchen the week before Christmas is candy made in a small kitchen the week before Christmas, and we would rather pour yours without the clock running.

• Orders over $50 ship free anywhere in the U.S.
• We do not ship outside the country.
• Shipping a few boxes to a few different addresses is normal this time of year — call the Hill City shop and we will sort it out with you.

The online store is open all winter, and the shipping details are there if you want the specifics.

If you are in the Hills this winter

Come to 205 Main Street in Hill City. It is the shop that does not close. We put gift boxes together at the counter in December, which is a better way to do it than guessing from a website, and the coffee bar is running — Hill City in January rewards anyone holding something hot.

Hours shift with the season and the weather, so call ahead at (605) 787-2925 if you are making a special trip. Most days in winter we are there well before the Mickelson Trail parking lot has anybody in it.

We have been making candy by hand, in small batches, since 1977. The part we like best is still a box going out the door with somebody’s name on it.

What Is a Bear Paw Candy?

What Is a Bear Paw Candy?

If you’ve walked into one of our shops in Keystone or Hill City, you’ve probably seen them stacked in the case: lumpy, golden-edged, a little different every time. That’s a bear paw, and it’s the candy we’re best known for.

So what is it?

A bear paw is a small cluster of nuts topped with soft caramel and covered in chocolate. Look at one from above and you’ll see where the name comes from: the nuts poke out around the edges like toes on a paw.

It sounds simple, and it is. That’s the point. When there are only three ingredients, each one has to be good.

How we make them

Every bear paw is made by hand in our Black Hills kitchens. We set the nuts, pour the caramel over them, and cover the whole thing in chocolate. Because a person does every step, no two paws look exactly alike. Some are a little wider, some have an extra nut sticking out. They all taste the same, which is to say, they don’t last long.

Nine ways to have one

You pick the nut and the chocolate:

• Nuts: pecan, cashew or almond
• Chocolate: milk, dark or white

That’s nine combinations, and every one is $5.50. If you can’t decide, the milk chocolate pecan is the classic place to start. Dark chocolate cashew is the pick for people who like it less sweet.

Sugar-free bear paws

Watching your sugar doesn’t mean skipping the bear paw. We make sugar-free bear paws in milk and dark chocolate, with pecans, cashews or almonds. That’s six kinds, all made by hand the same way, at the same price.

More ways to get the flavor

Caramel, nuts and chocolate work in more than one shape. Try our Bear Paw Fudge or the Bear Paw Truffle if you want the same flavors in a different bite.

Sending some home

Bear paws travel well and make an easy gift from the Black Hills. We ship anywhere in the U.S. by USPS Priority Mail from Hill City, and orders over $50 ship free.

Or stop by either shop and pick out your own. We’ll let you take your time choosing.

English Toffee: How We Make It, and Why It Keeps

English Toffee: How We Make It, and Why It Keeps

The kitchen smells different in October. In July it is mostly sugar and cream and whatever ice cream flavor somebody just opened. By the middle of October, with the back door shut against the wind, the smell that fills the room is browning butter. That is toffee cooking, and it is the batch we pay the closest attention to all year.

We have been making candy by hand, in small batches, since 1977. Some of it is forgiving. Fudge will wait for you. Caramel will mostly wait for you. Toffee will not.

What English toffee actually is

Two ingredients carry it: butter and sugar. That is close to the whole list. There is no cream in it, which is what separates toffee from caramel. Caramel stays soft because of the dairy. Toffee gets cooked hotter and further, until the sugar goes past chewy and into brittle, and then it snaps.

Ours gets almonds and a layer of chocolate over the top. Bite through it and you get three things in order — the snap, then butter, then the toasted almond underneath. It is a loud candy. People eat it standing over the counter so the pieces do not get away from them.

The part where you cannot walk away

Butter and sugar go in the kettle together and come up slowly. For a while nothing looks like it is happening. Then the batch starts to change color, and once it starts it moves fast — pale gold, then honey, then the shade of a penny. That last stretch is maybe a minute wide.

You go by color and by smell more than anything. Pull it early and it will be soft and taste flat. Leave it thirty seconds long and the butter scorches, and there is no fixing that. You start over. Everyone who has made candy for a living has thrown out a batch of toffee and taken the lesson.

When it is right, it goes out onto the slab and gets spread thin while it is still moving. Chocolate goes on while the surface is hot enough to melt it, which is the trick — the chocolate marries into the toffee instead of sitting on top of it like a lid. Almonds go over that. Then it cools, and it sets up hard, and we break it into sheets by hand. The pieces come out uneven on purpose. A toffee piece cut square looks like it came out of a machine.

It travels better than anything else we make

This is the practical reason we make a lot of toffee once the weather turns. Toffee has no cream in it and nothing soft to go wrong. It does not bloom, it does not weep, and it does not mind a cold mailbox. Of everything in our cases, it is the piece we feel best about putting in a box and sending across the country.

We ship anywhere in the United States from our online store, and orders over fifty dollars ship free. If you are mailing candy to somebody for the holidays, order earlier than feels necessary. Everyone decides at the same time, and the last two weeks of December belong to the shipping companies, not to us.

There is a sugar-free version

Toffee is a hard candy to make without sugar, because sugar is most of the structure. Ours comes out close — the same snap, the same almonds, the same browned-butter flavor. It is usually in the case alongside the rest of our sugar-free selection. If you are driving a long way for it, call ahead, because sugar-free items sell out faster than we expect them to.

Where to find it right now

Both shops have English toffee most days, though the calendar matters this time of year.

• Keystone, 117 Winter Street — open spring through October, so these are the last days of the season. Hours get shorter as the month runs out and they move with the weather. Call ahead if you are making the drive.
• Hill City, 205 Main Street — open year-round. Once Keystone closes, this is the shop, and the European-style coffee bar is here. A piece of toffee next to an espresso is the best five minutes of a cold afternoon.
• Ice cream — still running at both shops while Keystone is open. Nobody believes us until they see somebody order a specialty sundae in a forty-degree breeze.

If you are wondering whether a late-fall or winter trip up here is worth it, the short answer is yes, and quieter. Mount Rushmore is open every day of the year except December 25, when the buildings close but the grounds stay open if the weather allows. The parking is easy. The viewing terrace is nearly empty some mornings. And Hill City is twenty minutes down the road with the lights on and the kettles going.

Come by on a cold day and ask what is on the slab. Most days in the next few months, the answer involves butter.

The Last Weeks of the Keystone Season

The Last Weeks of the Keystone Season

October is the quiet month in Keystone. The buses thin out, parking opens up on Winter Street, and the hillsides above town go gold where the aspen stand in among the pines. Mornings start cold enough that you want your hands around something warm. By two in the afternoon you are carrying your jacket.

It is also the last stretch of our season. The Keystone shop is open spring through October, and when the month runs out we clean the kettles, pack what is left, and move the whole operation up the road for the winter. If a trip to Keystone is on your list this year, these are the weeks.

What the shop is like right now

Better, honestly. In July you wait behind a family of nine deciding between maple nut and penuche. In October you walk up to the case and take your time. We still pour fudge most days, and the marble slab out front is still the best show in the shop — hot fudge spread thin, worked with a scraper until it loses its shine and starts to set.

The ice cream counter stays on until we close, which surprises people in a 45-degree breeze. Jumbo scoops, soft serve, malts, specialty sundaes. Plenty of folks order one anyway and eat it in the car with the heater running. That is a Black Hills tradition as much as anything else here.

One thing to know: our hours shorten as the month goes on, and they move with the weather and the traffic. Most days we are open well into the evening, but late in October it is worth a phone call before you drive up. Keystone is (605) 666-4675.

What to take home before the door closes

Everything we make keeps better than people expect, which makes the last visit of the season a good time to stock up.

• Fudge. Cut thick off the slab. Chocolate and chocolate nut move fastest, but penuche — brown sugar, no cocoa at all — is the one that converts people.
• Bear paws. Pecans or cashews or almonds, our own caramel poured over the top, then dipped. A Black Hills staple and usually the first thing a regular asks for.
• Caramels. Cooked in copper, cut by hand, wrapped one at a time. The sea salt ones in dark chocolate are the ones we hear about.
• Taffy. Buy a bag, forget it in the glove box, find it in January, and it is still good.
• English toffee. Buttery and brittle under the chocolate. It travels well and it keeps.

There is a full sugar-free selection too — clusters, caramels, toffee, bear paws — for the people in your group who usually stand by the door and wait.

The roads close before we do

If you are building a drive around the visit, check the roads first. South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks says the Needles Highway closes to vehicles with the first snow of the season and does not reopen until April 1, or later depending on conditions. Iron Mountain Road stays open longer but closes off and on through the winter, depending on how fast the plows can get it cleared.

Mount Rushmore itself is the steady one. The National Park Service keeps the memorial open every day of the year except December 25, though the buildings and programs run on shorter winter hours starting in November. Worth checking the park’s own hours page the week you travel rather than trusting a schedule you saw in July.

We are just down the hill from the memorial. Most people come down off the mountain, find the light fading, and want something sweet before the drive back to Rapid City. That is most of our October afternoons.

After October, find us in Hill City

When Keystone closes for the winter, our Hill City shop keeps going. It is open year-round at 205 Main Street, and it is the one with the European-style coffee bar — espresso, cappuccino, a quiet table by the window while the snow comes down on Main Street. Same fudge, same bear paws, same ice cream counter. The slab out front runs all winter.

Hill City stays busier in the off-season than people assume. The 1880 Train runs out of Hill City from May through December, the galleries stay open, and November and December bring the kind of weekend where a warm shop with a coffee machine is exactly where everybody ends up.

Or we put it in a box

If you are not getting back out here before spring, our online shop ships anywhere in the United States, and orders over $50 ship free. Fudge, bear paws, caramels, truffles, toffee, taffy, the sugar-free selection — all of it, packed the same week it is made.

We have been making candy by hand, in small batches, since 1977. Some years that means a July line out the door. Some years it means a Tuesday in late October with four people in the shop and the whole counter to yourself. We like both, but the second one is a little easier to recommend.

The Two-Dollar Candy That Outsells Everything Else

The Two-Dollar Candy That Outsells Everything Else

People ask us fairly often what our best seller is. They usually expect the answer to involve chocolate. It doesn’t. The single most popular thing in the case is a plain cream caramel, sold by the piece for two dollars, with nothing on it at all.

It has been that way for a long time. We have been making candy by hand, in small batches, since 1977, and the caramel is the piece that quietly outsells the showier things sitting next to it.

What a cream caramel actually is

Caramel is a simple idea done slowly. Sugar, cream, butter, time. The cream is what separates a candy-shop caramel from the kind that comes in a plastic bag. It gives you a center that stays soft and buttery instead of turning into a workout for your jaw.

You can tell within the first bite. A good cream caramel gives way, then lets go slowly. It is rich without being cloying, and chewy without pulling a filling. That is the whole trick, and there is no shortcut to it — the batch takes as long as it takes.

We sell the cream caramel by the piece, which is either the perfect small treat or a rookie mistake. Most people who buy one buy several the next time.

Then we start dipping them

The same center goes in a lot of directions once chocolate gets involved, and each one tastes like a different candy.

Dipped in milk chocolate, you get the classic — soft center, chocolate that snaps just enough before the whole thing melts together. It is the safest gift in the store. Nobody has ever handed one back.

Dipped in dark chocolate, the sweetness pulls back and the butter comes forward. People who say they don’t like caramel often mean they don’t like sweet. This is usually the one that changes their mind.

Then there is sea salt. A pinch of coarse salt on top of the chocolate sharpens everything underneath it and makes the caramel taste more like caramel. The dark chocolate sea salt caramel is the grown-up version; the milk chocolate one is its sweeter sibling. Buying a few of each is the honest way to settle the argument.

If you want the caramel worked into something bigger, it also turns up in our caramel pecan fudge and in the bear paws, where it sits between pecans and chocolate.

October is the last month in Keystone

Our Keystone shop at 117 Winter Street runs spring through October, so this is the stretch where people come through and stock up before we close for the winter. If you are heading up to Mount Rushmore this month, the memorial’s grounds and visitor center are on fall hours, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and the evening lighting program starts at 5 p.m. beginning October 1 — worth checking the park’s hours page before you go.

Keystone is a short walk of a town, which is the nice part. You can see the faces, come back down the hill, and be holding a caramel twenty minutes later.

Once Keystone closes, Hill City carries the winter. The shop at 205 Main Street is open year-round, with the coffee bar going and the candy case full, and it stays that way through the quiet months when the highways empty out. Hours shift with the season, so call ahead if you are making a special trip.

If you can’t get here

Caramels travel well, which is not true of everything we make. They ship anywhere in the U.S., and orders over $50 ship free. Most people who order start with a box of the milk chocolate ones and add a few sea salt pieces to see what all the fuss is about.

It is also the time of year to start thinking a few weeks ahead. The holiday shipping window fills up faster than anyone expects, and caramel keeps better than most candy. You can see the whole case in our online shop.

Either way, if you do make it through the door, get the plain one first. Two dollars is a cheap way to find out why it outsells everything else.