Circus Peanuts, anyone?
(Photo by SP8254)
Over at Hank and Willie this morning, Anna posted a recipe for homemade candy corn. I have to admit to an odd fascination with candy corn. If you ask me if I like it, I’ll probably say no — but if you offer me a piece, I may take it. It’s one of those candies I have to stare at for awhile, before rolling it around my mouth and saying things like, “This is awful! Why am I eating this?” NovySan says it’s marzipan — but not good marzipan.
The candy corn thing, though, made me think of another strange sort of candy — one that I’m not sure I would take if you offered me one. Circus Peanuts. Those bizarre, bloated blobs of orangey sugar lumps. They’re an occasional topic of conversation in our house. NovySan likes them, because his grandfather always had a jar. I shudder whenever I think about them. Maybe it’s the odd sort of tingling seizure near the back of my throat. It’s like a Pavlovian response to the very mention of Circus Peanuts.
So, of course, I had to go see whether I could find a recipe for them. Was I really going to make Circus Peanuts for my husband? Probably — though it might depend on whether I needed a candy thermometer, and whether I was trying to avoid doing something important. I might just have told him that I’d thought about it.
I didn’t find a recipe, though. Apparently, they’re very difficult to make. And yet, several candy companies do make them. Diana Moore Eschofen, a spokesperson for Spangler Candy Company (”a producer of superior quality Circus Peanuts”), says, “The consistency is very hard to achieve. The ingredients have to be just right, the heat and the moisture have to be perfect. There are specific idiosyncrasies in the recipe that have to watched. Circus Peanuts aren’t easy, but they definitely have a following. A devoted, faithful following.”
I was surprised to find out that they’re banana-flavored. I don’t actually remember the flavor of Circus Peanuts, except as something vaguely orange. Eschofen says no one knows why they’re banana-flavored, either. Or why they’re orange. “We’ve asked people in the Spangler family. We’ve asked historians from Barnum and Bailey Circus. But no one knows.”
But if I didn’t find a recipe for Circus Peanuts, I did find several that use Circus Peanuts. Beside’s