Artisan
Confection Confessions
For the Pananes family, candy making is a tradition
By Jaime Ridgley
Photography by Noel Kline
It’s early on a Saturday morning in late January, and the candy makers at Olympia Candy Kitchen in Chambersburg are working on the first batch of bite-sized chocolate and peanut butter eggs in preparation for the early Easter season.
On this morning, row after row of uniformly shaped peanut butter pieces make their way on a conveyor belt, heading for a river of chocolate.
Roy Sollenberger, Olympia’s production manager of nearly 21 years, watches over the process. He is there from the time the peanut butter gets cut into oblong shapes by a Teflon-coated wire to when it travels down the conveyor belt through the river of chocolate. Roy makes sure the operation is running smoothly—agitating the chocolate to prevent hot spots, controlling the flow of chocolate, watching the temperature gauge on the wall to ensure the temperature doesn’t rise too high.
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