How Much Is That Toffee in the Window?

Mike Graves sits in a little room in the Farmers Market and makes candy. Outside the window gathers an ever-changing cluster of faces--most wide-eyed with curiosity or innocent glee, some faintly green-eyed with envy.

He’s been doing this since he was in high school. “My parents owned a store in the market,” he says, ladling more enrobing chocolate onto a sheet of marble, “so I kind of grew up around here. They heard the owner of Littlejohn’s was looking for an apprentice. That was 10 years ago, and a couple of years down the road I bought the place out.”

Littlejohn’s English Toffee House has been in the Farmers Market since 1946, and Graves has essentially kept the lines of candy it’s known for: English toffee, caramel-coated marshmallows (“a big favorite”), nut barks, caramel-coated apples rolled in fresh crushed almonds (“people get hostile if we don’t have them, and especially when we don’t have the chocolate-coated caramel apples”).

A couple of years ago, Graves decided to enlarge his horizons by taking a professional candy-making course in Pennsylvania. “I saw the machines, the new methods, the big automatic enrobers,” he says, working the mass of melted dark chocolate with his right hand and enrobing the sticks of soft mint filling with his left, “but I realized people like watching candy being made. Sometimes I wish I had a video camera to get the reactions on people’s faces.”

The only chocolate he uses is Peters, a confectioners’ line owned by Nestle’s, and only the darkest grade, Monogram, and the lightest milk chocolate, Ultra. He doesn’t work much with white chocolate. “I don’t like the feel of it,” he says. “And it’s not too popular. The chocolate bean contains natural antioxidants, so dark chocolate doesn’t turn rancid. White chocolate does, though. It’s very delicate, and I end up having to throw out a lot of it.”

Surprisingly for a candy shop, Valentine’s Day is not Graves’ biggest holiday. “That’s Christmas,” he says. “We’re Littlejohn’s English Toffee, after all, and we ship toffee all over the country.

“I like making toffee. When I get it just the right thickness, so there’s that initial resistance, and then the break and the mass dissolves in your mouth--getting that right is a feeling of satisfaction to me. Also, toffee is a big money-maker. It’s a full day’s job making 25 pounds of mint sticks, but in three hours I could make 60 or 90 pounds of toffee.” English toffee sells for $11.85 a pound.

Littlejohn’s second biggest holiday is Easter. “We put out a lot of special Easter lines,” Graves says, “creme center eggs, a hollow chocolate shell holding chocolates. I have a collection of chocolate molds 20 to 50 years old.”

During Valentine’s Day, Graves’ third biggest holiday, Littlejohn’s emphasizes traditional heart boxes. “We fill them with our own chocolates,” Graves says, “mint stick, molasses chip, caramels dipped in chocolate, creme center chocolates.

“I feel an obligation to provide the traditional Valentine’s chocolate candies. But you can also fill heart boxes with anything you like. A lot of people actually fill them with toffee.”

* Littlejohn’s English Toffee House at Farmers Market, (213) 936-5379. Open Monday-Saturday 9 a.m.-6:30 p.m. Sunday 10 a.m.-5 p.m.