Care · 11 January 2026
Keeping handmade candy clear
Hard candy fails in two directions: it takes on water and goes sticky, or it takes on heat and slumps into itself. Both are manageable if you know what you are dealing with.
Hard candy is mostly sugar and almost no water, which is exactly why it wants water back. Leave a lollipop on a counter in a humid kitchen and it will quietly pull moisture out of the air until the surface turns tacky. This is not spoilage and it is not dangerous — it is chemistry, and it is entirely avoidable.
Rule one: keep it sealed
The single most useful thing you can do is put the candy in a container that closes properly. A glass jar with a rubber gasket, a metal tin, or a heavy zip bag with the air pressed out will each add weeks. A paper bag, however charming, will not: paper breathes, and that is the opposite of what you want.
If your candy came in a paper bag from us, move it to a jar when you get home. We use paper because it is the right packaging for a shop counter and the wrong packaging for a kitchen shelf.
Rule two: cool, dry, dark
- Cool means below about 75°F / 24°C. Above that, hard candy starts to soften and two pieces in the same bag will fuse into one.
- Dry means away from the kettle, the dishwasher and the bathroom. Relative humidity above roughly 55% is where problems begin.
- Dark matters less than people think. Light will fade some colours over months, but it will not affect taste in the timescales we are talking about.
A cupboard away from the stove is better than a decorative bowl on the windowsill. A windowsill in Minneapolis in February, with the radiator under it, is the worst place in the house.
Rule three: the freezer is a myth
Freezing does not preserve hard candy; it invites condensation. Every time you take the container out, moisture forms on the cold surface, and candy that has been in and out of a freezer twice will be sticky on the outside and perfectly dry on the inside. If you must freeze something — and with hard candy you really do not need to — keep it in a sealed bag, let it come to room temperature before opening, and accept that you have made your life harder for no benefit.
How long will it keep?
Honest answer: it depends on your kitchen, and we do not print a "best before" date we cannot control. In a sealed jar in a dry room, the candies we make are at their best within four to six weeks and remain perfectly good for several months. Flavour is the first thing to fade — delicate notes like violet and star anise go quiet long before the texture changes.
For events, we recommend ordering as close to the date as the batch schedule allows. Fresh candy is not a marketing line; it genuinely tastes different.
If it has already gone sticky
You have three options, in order of preference:
- Eat it. Slightly tacky candy is not spoiled. It may stick to the wrapper and it may feel soft, but the flavour is intact.
- Dry it out. Put the pieces in a single layer on parchment in a dry room for a few hours, then reseal. This works better for slabs and shards than for lollipops on sticks.
- Use it up. Broken shards are excellent crushed over ice cream or stirred into hot tea, where the texture problem disappears entirely.
Serving note
If you are putting candy out for guests, do it in small amounts and refill from a sealed jar rather than leaving the whole box open for four hours. Candy that sits out during a party is the candy that goes sticky first.
No candy is improved by sitting out. It is improved by being eaten in the week you bought it, by people who are paying attention.
One more thing worth saying plainly: we make no claims about shelf life beyond what we have seen in our own shop. If your candy arrives damaged or clearly not right, tell us — we would rather hear about it than have you quietly throw it away.
Next batch
Tell us what you would like us to make.
We take requests by email rather than through a shopping cart, because every batch is planned by hand. Send us a note and we will confirm flavours, quantity, price and a pick-up or shipping date.