Caramels For Every Sweet Tooth

In Janet Shulman’s caramels, you’ll find local ingredients. Whether it is Schlafly beer or bacon from Missouri-based pigs, reports Ladue-Frontenac Patch.

Shulman, the mother of two, is a self-described “mompreneur.” As her children went off to school, she worked at various jobs and became known as a never-say-no volunteer. But she always felt it was important to share home-cooked meals at the end of the day with her husband and children.

“Then I realized I wanted to start a business where I could control the hours and that would embrace what I know and what I like to do,” she said. “And I love to cook.”

So she launched The Baking House and set out to find a commercial kitchen she could borrow to create gourmet bakery goods. When she approached the Women’s Exchange in Ladue, she got the go-ahead plus a question that ended up sending her down a different path: “Do you know how to make caramel candy?”

Having learned from her volunteer work that saying “yes” and jumping in to things with both feet usually works out just fine, Shulman said “yes.”

So she immediately went to work in her own kitchen, experimenting with recipes and improvising until she figured out how to make caramel.

These days she makes it in 20-pound batches in a leased kitchen in Clayton, pouring, cutting and wrapping each piece by hand and personally packaging all of it in recyclable bags and boxes. She fills custom orders ($18 for a half-pound gift bag, $36 for a one-pound box) through her website and delivers to about a dozen local stores.

Photo from The Caramel House