How Sweet It Is

The old-fashioned candy store that tantalizes kids with countless jars of assorted candies and a profusion of homemade chocolate-covered butter creams cooked right on the premises is hard to find these days.

But a block from the beach in Santa Cruz, Buckhart’s candy store continues to defy time as it sweetly, but without fanfare, approaches its 100-year mark.

Buckhart’s long-distance fans mail-order their boxes of molasses taffy, seafoam, peanut brittle and butter creams, made in small batches just as founder Harry Buckhart did when he began making candy in 1902.

Carol and Robert Clark, who bought Buckhart’s store (in its present location since the 1920s) in 1971, refuse to expand or to sell their candy wholesale. They want to keep Buckhart’s small and old-fashioned.

Jackie Nelson, the Clarks’ daughter, who operates the store with her mother and husband John, who makes the candy, notes that in California and the West, the demand for expensive “designer chocolates like fancy truffles” has increasingly elbowed mom-and-pop candy making shops out of the market.

She believes that the truffles and molded chocolates sold by most candy shops today are based on an entirely different concept of candy than that featured at Buckhart’s. “Most old-fashioned candies are cooked,” Nelson says. “Truffles and new candies like that are not cooked. They’re just melted and then hardened in the refrigerator; there’s no cooking process and you don’t add a whole bunch of ingredients. We make creams and caramels and things like that. A lot of the modern candy stores make truffles--period.”

The store’s trademark candy is a chocolate-covered rum-and-butter cream called the Victoria. Movie star Zazu Pitts bought the recipe from Frazier Lewis, who invented the candy and wholesaled it around the state under the name “the Frazier Lewis.”

Apparently Pitts never got around to producing it, Nelson says, but Buckhart “figured out his own recipe” for the popular cream. It’s the only one of Buckhart’s old-fashioned creams that comes in a large patty--about the size of a York peppermint--as well as in the usual candy-cream size.

To order, call (408) 475-1286 or write to: Buckhart’s, 2-1231 East Cliff Drive, Santa Cruz, CA 95062. Cost of a 1-pound box of candy, including shipping and handling is $18.50; for 2 pounds, $29.50. Prices are somewhat higher in summer because of special packing requirements.