Inside Beamish Museum’s Jubilee sweet shop where confectioners work their magic

Stepping inside Jubilee Confectioners in The 1900s Town at Beamish Museum, we are faced with wooden shelves stacked with jars filled with sweets of all varieties and already there’s an aroma in the air.

Wherever you visit at the County Durham museum – whether jumping a few decades to the 1950s cinema nearby or taking a tram ride down to the Georgian inn – you journey back in time, although today is a non-opening day so we’ve had the unique experience of seeing modern vehicles in the town’s cobbled streets as work is carried out in readiness for the next day’s visitors.

And of all Beamish’s attractions, this tempting shop is the place to go to really enjoy a taste of yesteryear – literally – selling all kinds of old-fashioned sweets it makes itself plus the likes of bonbons, jellies and chocolate. On any other day there would be long queues outside but today we’re taking advantage of its soon-to-change winter closing time to watch hard-boiled sweets being made the traditional way.

We’re escorted into the shop’s back room – the ‘factory’ – where behind the counter, confectioners Dani Johnson and Rowan Ord are already heating sugar and water in a giant copper pan. They’re going to be making the shop’s most popular sweet, rhubarb and custard – which is two flavours really, so actually involves two processes which turn out to be fascinating to watch.

As we find out, timing throughout the process is crucial and the pair, well used to working together, have it off to a tee. Save for some necessary safety equipment, including protective gloves, Dani tell us this is as near as you can get to the way boiled sweets were made back in the day and it makes use of such lovely old equipment as a Sweet Polisher.

First up Dani, from Chester-le-Street, who has learned the process during the seven years she has worked at Beamish, is heating up the mix of 10lbs of granulated sugar and 5lb of glucose syrup to a whopping 140 degrees, a bit higher than is strictly needed for its ‘cracking point’ but it’s all about having the right temperature at the right time as the hot liquid is poured from the copper pan onto a large table.

Even the outside-weather temperature can have an effect. The table is made of steel which immediately brings the heat down and then it’s a matter of working quickly before the mixture sets.

It is equally divided, with a natural rhubarb flavouring and red food colouring now being added to one half; with an artificial custard flavouring and yellow dye combined with the other.

While they might not have had sweets with this particular flavour combination back in the 1900s, these flavours and food colourings were around, although in 1913 customers were more likely to be buying something lead-based, says Dani, so today’s customers customers definitely benefit from the natural dyes.

It’s at this stage that the magic comes in. Dani and Rowan start kneading their separate halves, the colours so vibrant they look like molten glass. There are sharp cracking noises as air is squeezed out – and the smell of the ingredients, the rhubarb in particular, is amazing.

The mixtures are cooling – but just enough – and a little oil then flour is used to stop any sticking. But before the pliable colour layers can be combined to form the distinctive two-tone sweet, they have to have different textures in order to adhere together and not cause the colours to flow into one.

So, while Dani keeps kneading the red rhubarb mix like it’s bread, Rowan drapes the yellow custard around a big hook in the wall and pulls and stretches it until it looks like a beautiful long golden rope. This also re-introduces air bubbles which means it develops a more whipped-like texture.

So, when the two are combined, the mixtures are holding their shape and starting to set. The next step sees Rowan cut the mass into strips – which becomes all harder to do the more it hardens – and Dani keeps in time, passing each quickly-cooling strip through a roller which flattens and cuts the outline of individual oval sweet shapes. They get into a rhythm with the work, they say. “We’re the A Team,” laughs Rowan who has worked in the sweet shop for the past few years of the seven she has been at Beamish.

And the last step – with the last of the strips passing through the roller just as the first lot have hardened – must be the real fun bit for them as they then smack the strips off the hard table surface where they shatter into perfectly-formed individual sweets.

The factory has a variety of different-shape rollers on display but the confectioners stick to the traditional sweet shapes of the time, which also include little round ones and a pear-drop shape. Finally, they shake the sweets in a sieve, to knock off those sharp sugary edges which can cut the mouth, although there’s the big copper Sweet Polisher piece of equipment that can do the same job.

And then those best-seller sweets are ready to be poured into a jar for display on the shop shelf. It is hard and fast work but the end-result is hugely satisfying.

The batch Dani and Rowan have made fills 50 bags, each weighing a quarter of a pound. Nobody can face counting the exact number inside the bag but it’s a lot of sweets.

Dani admits the rhubarb and custard sweets aren’t her own favourite, as she prefers a less sugary winter-warmer type, and I thought I’d be the same but I tried one of the newly-made sweets while a trace of its warmth still lingered. So how did it taste?

Exactly like it should. To match that earlier aroma, it has a distinct rhubarb flavour on one side while the yellow strip tastes just like custard. These could easily become a favourite with me too and I’m not even a huge fan of confectionery.

Despite their popularity, fans need not fear the shop will ever run out. The team – there are five confectioners in all – make 10 batches of rhubarb and custard every four days which compares, for instance, to a batch of barley sugar every two weeks.

Whatever customers’ tastes, there are around 26 varieties here to cater for them, including the likes of sasparilla, black bullets, cough candy and little sherbet pips. The team makes cinder toffee, another traditional favourite, too although Dani says this would not have been sold at a 1900s sweet shop as it’s such an easy recipe that people would have made it themselves at home.

They also add seasonal sweets to the options. “Cough candy and cherry menthol was popular this winter,” says Dani and the new season will see the addition of the likes of lovely-sounding fairy satins.

Sweet-making goes on in Jubilee Confectioners’ back room factory even when the museum is closed to visitors, and – save for an online option – the results can be bought only in this front shop. Otherwise it could never keep up with demand.

On opening days visitors can watch the staff at work for themselves, as they go about creating the glorious ribbons of colour and flavour that are shaped into those 26 varieties of sweets costing £2.95 a bag. Beamish is currently open at weekends only but during the February 18-26 half-term families can visit daily and then from February 27 it will have Wednesday to Sunday opening followed by daily opening from March 31. Find more about what’s on offer at the museum see here.

View news Source: https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/inside-beamish-museums-jubilee-sweet-30932253