Did you know that more than half of all chocolate made in America is made in Pennsylvania? Berks County plays a king-sized role in this delicious industry, from big businesses, like R.M. Palmer Co. in West Reading and Godiva Chocolatier in Exeter Township, to small companies with deep roots. Here’s a look at four of the sweetest companies in Berks.
Billy’s Candies
4949 Kutztown Rd. Temple
610.929.1673
At Billy’s Candies in Temple, the candy makers start the old-fashioned way. They mix up sweet cream centers, knead them and press them into the right shape. Then they wait.
When the cream centers are ready, they place each one on a conveyer belt, where it’s encased in chocolate: milk, dark and sometimes white.
Candy makers add decorative flourishes on the top of each chocolate. It could come in the form of eyes for a giant chocolate Easter bunny. (How giant? Billy’s has a mold to make a 40-inch-tall rabbit that weighs 35-40 pounds!)
Billy’s has added some new products like sea salt caramels, but otherwise the company mainly uses original recipes, some dating back to 1935. Bill and Helen Fillman started the business that year and made candy through the early 1970s, when Joe and Phyllis Miller bought the business. Billy’s owner Dave Skipper still uses the Fillmans’ recipes and much of their equipment. Fans say they love the old-school store on Kutztown Road and the quality of the goodies.
Before he became a chocolatier, Skipper was working in the agriculture industry and wanted to be his own boss. When he heard the Millers wanted to retire, he made the leap into candy making.
“It’s a fun job. People are nice and friendly when they come into the store,” he says. “It’s a place people want to come to, not that they have to come to.”
Skipper and his staff of about a dozen have the satisfaction of making delicious treats. They get to know their customers at the retail store in Temple, but the goodies are also sold online.
These days, when anyone can find chocolate-making supplies in grocery stores and craft shops, Skipper points out the difference in the chocolate used by local candy makers.
Compound chocolate found at craft stores is easy to melt and doesn’t require tempering. (Tempering makes chocolate smooth and glossy, with a crisp snap when you take a bite. However, it can be complicated and messy.) The kind of chocolate Billy’s works with has higher amounts of cocoa butter, giving it a better texture, taste and feel, Skipper says.
A best seller at Billy’s is the cashew patty, a mix of chewy caramel and roasted cashews covered in milk or dark chocolate. Vanilla buttercreams coated in dark chocolate are a hit too, along with peanut butter balls, peanut butter with a double coating of milk or dark chocolate.
Can’t choose just one?
“A nice part about coming to Billy’s is we have more than 50 products in our case,” Skipper says. “You can go down the case and pick exactly what you want to put in your sampler box.”
Reppert’s Candy
2708 W. Philadelphia Avenue, Oley
reppertscandy.com
610.689.9200
With a 50-year anniversary coming up next year, Reppert’s Candy is already celebrating.
New this summer is the chance to watch fresh fudge being made every Friday and Saturday. Bonus: you can buy it immediately after it’s ready, making it the freshest fudge in Berks.
Next year will bring more delicious ways to celebrate the anniversary, including a limited release of an old-fashioned, one-pound box of Reppert’s candy that you may have dreamed about as a child. And retired candies like potato candy will be back for a short time, too.
These traditions began in the 1940s with Floyd and Dorothy Reppert making candy in their basement. They started a business in 1969 and when they retired, they sold it to Larry and Jean Schell.
“The primary candy of the business has not really changed over the years — making quality buttercreams, peanut butter, caramels — the classic sweets that everybody enjoys,” says Keith Schell, who has owned the company for a year and a half.
Keith is the Schells’ oldest son and one member of the family in a staff of 30-50, depending on the season. Jean still helps behind the counter at the store. Keith’s wife Jennifer is the chief financial officer. Keith Schell has spent more than 30 years with the company, taking on roles from janitor to now-owner. The hard work is worth it, he says.
“How can you not enjoy making candy?” Schell says. “It’s a sweet thing to do, making people happy with candy.”
Reppert’s, hailed by fans as top-notch and a gem, offers dozens of candy varieties at its retail store in Oley, at Smiths Candies in Myerstown, and online. Peanut butter balls are a top seller. To make them, candy makers send peanut butter balls into a German-made enrober to coat them in milk, dark or white chocolate.
One type of retro candy, coconut strips, has found a new market. The multi-flavored layers of coconut candy are gaining popularity with Latinos and for quinceañeras, Schell says. In addition to traditional flavors like molasses and Neapolitan, Reppert’s has added new flavors like strawberry-vanilla and a vanilla-cherry in green, white and red, celebrating the colors of the Mexican flag.
For the popular buttercreams, Reppert’s keeps it tried and true with the classic combination of butter and sugar and avoids the switch to powdered cream. Flavors include raspberry, lemon, orange, mint and vanilla. There’s also a buttercream with no extra flavor. “We actually just put a lot of butter in it,” Schell says. “So much so that when you bite into it, you can actually taste the butter in the cream.”
Lorah’s Handmade Chocolates
611 Alleghenyville Rd. Mohnton
717.917.7006
Decades ago, candy makers mixed creams on chilled marble tables by hand and dipped each one into melted chocolate, piece by piece. That’s the way it’s still done at Lorah’s Handmade Chocolates in Mohnton. Ruth Lorah started the business in nearby Denver in 1970, and in 2009 her niece Maria Harvey decided to take the reins. Harvey once trained as a veterinary assistant, yet she saw the company’s strong history as a great opportunity to change gears.
Today, she makes everything from scratch, using her aunt’s recipes for caramels, marshmallows and cream centers.
“It’s a labor of love,” she says.
Take the top-selling salted caramels. Harvey cooks a batch of homemade caramel, cools it, cuts it and coats each piece in chocolate, then sprinkles pink Himalayan sea salt on top.
It might take a while to hand-dip every last chocolate, but you can taste the difference.
“Because we hand-coat our chocolate, it has a different viscosity,” she says. “You get more chocolate on a piece of candy.”
Customers love the traditional chocolates and also ask for new items, so Harvey’s adapted her aunt’s recipes to come up with new flavors and sweets. That’s led to treats like pumpkin spice truffles, chamomile lavender truffles and chocolate-covered crystalized ginger. For the coffee lover, she mixes coffee with chocolate to make coffee cream, coffee crunch and espresso shots. The chocolates are sold at retail stores in Berks and Lancaster counties, including Say Cheese! Restaurant and Cheese in West Reading, Ridgewood Winery in Birdsboro and Setter Ridge Vineyards in Kutztown.
The newest addition is a line of liquid syrup-centered pieces, including wine cordials, bourbon butterballs and Fireball cinnamon whiskey treats. Harvey saw similar chocolates sold in other states and mixed batch after batch to make sure the alcohol level was low enough to legally sell in Pennsylvania.
Even if the treats aren’t overly boozy, adding alcohol yields a distinct change in the flavor. Harvey compared a batch made with Ridgewood’s blackberry wine to a batch made with blackberry juice.
“The process of making the wine makes a huge difference in the taste,” Harvey says. “Even though most of the alcohol is gone.”
While the candy is made in a kitchen at Harvey’s home, she also takes her antique confectionery roller on the road to show groups exactly how it’s done.
For nearly a decade, Harvey has made every last piece of Lorah’s chocolate. Last year, she added an intern. Daughter Gabrielle Haas just graduated from college and will join the company to handle the accounting side of things. It’s the start of a third generation of Lorah’s Handmade Chocolates.
The Story of Zipf’s Candies by Sweet Surprises
If you’re of a certain age and grew up in Berks County, the phrase “fluff egg” may make your mouth water.
Zipf’s Candies’ famous fluff eggs had a soft, gooey marshmallow center wrapped in fudgy milk chocolate fluff and then coated in dark chocolate.
If you were planning your Easter basket budget in the early 1970s, you could find fluff eggs for 59 cents in flavors like cherry and vanilla at any of Zipf’s stores in the Reading area. They were treasured and decadent treats. After the Zipfs retired, the fluff eggs disappeared.
But last year they came back, thanks to Sweet Surprises in West Reading. It’s one of the last Zipf’s Candies stores, and owner Jennifer Bednez is reviving the Reading candy maker’s vintage recipes.
While Zipf’s chocolate-making history dates back more than a century, Bednez is new to the business.
After she was let go from a job, she started working at Sweet Surprises as she contemplated her future. There, she learned from shop owner Carol Wells. When Wells retired five years ago, Bednez bought the business.
Sweet Surprises was one of Zipf’s Candies candy stores from the 1970s through 1991. Yet Bednez wasn’t familiar with the rich history of the candy making family.
The Zipfs were German immigrants who first opened a candy store in 1905 at 929 Penn St. in Reading. At its peak, the company had seven retail stores in the Reading area and supplied hundreds of stores in the Philadelphia region and at the Jersey shore. That era ended when the owners of the company retired.
Still, customers at Sweet Surprises continue to share their childhood candy memories.
The Zipf’s connection was strengthened not too long ago. After meeting a member of the Zipf family in the store, Bednez reached out to another member of the family, one who made candy for two decades.
They connected; Lee Zipf III shared the family’s old recipes and taught Bednez how to make the treasured treats.
“Ninety percent of my candies are Zipf’s recipes, which I make,” she says.
There are cashew patties, a combination of caramel and cashew. There are almond nut balls, made by rolling chocolate ganache in roasted almonds. There’s chocolate whip, a chocolate ganache in milk and dark chocolate. And this Easter, she made fluff eggs in plain, peanut butter, cherry and almond. Fans describe them as being as wonderful as they remembered.
544 Penn Avenue, West Reading | sweet-surprises.com | 610.373.2121
