The dark and frigid air circulates with ceaseless whispers; carried in these windy currents is the intoxicating aroma of cooking chocolates. The very molecules of the night agitate with the upward swell of chords of music elongated by sweeps of tensed horsehair hanks over the tremulous strings of a quartet of violin, viola, cello, and upright bass. The music is heavy with passion and enchantment. A dancing duo pivot into the scene– they take steep and measured tango steps towards the azure entrance of Shane Confectionery. Her burgundy dress billows in the breeze; his tuxedo shirt is illumed by the pearly light that frays outward from the building’s façade. Tonight is a night of romance. Our young gentleman knows that in order to bring his date to the zenithed height of ecstasy, he must take her to the grounds of 110 Market Street, so rich with a heritage of sweetness. He must take her to the space perfumed by the aprodisiacal fragrance of tempering chocolates.

The young lovers enter through the in-swinging door marked with the names and reigns of master confectioners. The couple whose veins rush with crimson torrents step onto a beryl carpet; they look out onto the mirror-bottomed display cases which array hundreds of homemade sweets and delicacies. Cordial cherries with garnet-colored interiors and umber exteriors lie lavishly, chocolate dipped strawberries of elephantine proportions are invitingly situated on the shelving, menthyl Valentines Holland Mints dot along, pastel Jordan Almonds fill glass display jars, red hot Cinnamon Hearts warm one’s stare…the elegant arrangement makes their hearts pound like tympanies.

Truffles catch our lovers’ eyes– dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate filled with chambord, invigorating dark chocolate espresso, milk chocolate hazelnut, fizz-ensnared champagne– all of these beckon the salivating tongues of our star-destined pair. Our lovers issue their purchase and exit the confectionery with beaming smiles. Once more they pass the string quartet, and they dance to the doorway of 116 Market Street a few paces down the block.

They approach the soda fountain, whose xanthic light radiates from a milkglass lamp. They enter the store, seeing familiar faces that greet them warmly. Offers to sample the newest ice cream flavor, “Black Forest” are immediately made. The deliciousness of the flavors overtakes them. A dashing young soda jerk calls their attention to homemade cinnamon marshmallows, gently wrapped and ready to take home. The soda jerk explains that they make great gift items. He then calls their attention to an arrangement of real dark long-stemmed roses. Our couple smiles at one another. Perhaps the lovers would like some Chestnut and Port Wine truffles penned “Nipples of Venus.” The soda jerk blushes. He then brings them to a glass display case of fine woodwork, where chocolate-dipped pretzels are arranged; they come in three flavors: milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and white chocolate. Wait just a moment– the soda jerk knows exactly what the lovers want. They would like an ice cream soda romantically served with two straws to quench their thirst. It is the newest item to the menu, and just in time for St. Valentines Day, the “Coeur D’écarlate,” or “The Scarlet Heart,” a treat consisting of strawberry purée, fresh milk, sparkling water, and a scoop of sweet and creamy coconut ice cream. They order one and enjoy it slowly, its irresistible taste overcomes them both. Our lovers leave, satisfied, knowing that they both will come back for more.
This concludes this chapter…

With Love,
The Berley Brothers and Staff

IN OTHER NEWS:

Ryan Berley participates in a Mayor’s Roundtable Discussion with Dept. of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

On January 26th, brother Ryan was invited to join in a conversation between Mayor Nutter, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and a select group of Philadelphia food leaders. Topics discussed were food stamp programs recently under fire, nutritional lunches for schools and the recent rise of farming activity in the United States. Ryan asked Secretary Vilsack how the Administration can overcome the variety of barriers to get more Americans to buy local and domestic food. His answer? Communication of information related to micro and macro food processing, labeling foodstuff as “Local” or “Made in America” and education about the related benefits of better health, more domestic jobs and greater safety controls with food grown and processed closer to our homes. Yes!

Dear Friends and Followers:
The new calendar year unfurls its checkerboard of days while the twelve months of yesteryear flutter away in a gust of passing breeze. For we who are situated on the grounds of the Franklin Fountain and Shane Confectionery, our dwelling and conduct is set in a century’s length removed from the present. For our confectioners, pastry chef team, candy clerks and soda jerks, the year of 1912 has just presented to us its trackless timescape. It is an exciting year, holding the promise of technological advancement in the way of aerial and nautical travel, as well as innovation in the literary field as well as the visual arts. Also, we can expect a roilsome four-way political race for the occupancy of the Presidential office. Yes, we can await these coming historical milestones as we conduct our culinary lives with directed energy mustered from our sense of independence and fiercely-set volition. We wish you all a Happy New Year– may it be lived with merriment and inexorable might, and may you find strong winds and well-compassed direction on your own personal voyage.

Speaking of voyages set forth, we have embarked on our own confectionery endeavors, finding results most pleasant and rewarding. Insofar as ice cream is concerned, we have three new flavors to debut. First, there is our “Cashew Butterscotch” ice cream, composed of salted and fire-roasted cashew nuts pureed into a paste which swirls throughout the ice cream base alongside fibrine threads of our house-made batch of amber-colored butterscotch. Its deliciousness halts passing thoughts to a screeching halt as your mind, body, and soul savors the rich complexity of flavor.

We also have a novel flavor called “Stephen Foster’s Banana Cake Ice Cream.” Stephen Foster is considered the father of American song-writing– he composed such musical gems as “Oh Susanna!” which was belted by pick-swinging prospectors in the northern California mountain ranges during the gold rush of ‘49, and he also composed the more elegant, gorilla-mollifying “Beautiful Dreamer.” It is not widely known that Mr. Foster was a Pennsylvanian, and it is even lesser known that “Oh Susanna!” was debuted in an ice cream saloon in Pittsburgh. So, we would like to honor Foster’s musical legacy and contributions to Americana with a melody of sweet flavor; delicious banana and rum based ice cream with rum buttercream cake twirling throughout it. We do think you will be pleased with this gustatory sing-a-long. We will also be featuring “Chocolate Filbert Nut” ice cream — house roasted and salted hazlenuts are added to our decadent base of chocolate ice cream. Its flavor is simple but remarkably effective in its pronounced “wowing” ability. Do order some up and taste it for yourself.

While speaking of tasteful orderliness, let us bring to your attention our featured monthly soda: “Frostie Sodas”, with their “Root Beer” line and their “Cherry Limeade”. Frostie Sodas were originally bottled by the Frostie Beverage Company in Catonsville, Maryland in 1931. Its taste is resplendent and is fit for a monarch. Each bottle achieves the carefully mixed craftwork of the most trained soda jerk. Please buy some to taste its sweetness that is as intricate and beautiful as the frost on a glass window pane.

While on the subject of the beautifully sweet and the sweetly beautiful, we have some new and old-time favorite confections for you at Shane Confectionery, including Cream Filbert Nuts, also known as “snowballs”, which are, simply said, hard white candy exteriors encapsulating creamy hazelnut paste richness inside. We would also like to highlight our seasonal truffle: Hazelnut Milk Chocolate, which is overpoweringly scrumptious.

Are you looking for something to warm you up? Why not purchase some of our Wilbur Cocoa Tins? This, sold along with our homemade vanilla marshmallows, offers you all the necessary ingredients for a steamy cup of hot cocoa to be slowly sipped by a crackling hearth-side, perhaps even while swaddled in a blanket and, perchance, with a purring kitten snugly set in your lap. It is meant in this way for home use, and is the perfect kit for wintertime relaxation. A warm cup of cocoa and a fireside snuggle is a great preventative measure to stave away seasonal illness.

Are you already stricken with a touch of the sniffles? Have you a bothersome cold? Well, fear not. You may purchase one of our specialty lozenges at Shane Confectionery to quell your symptoms, or an herbal hard candy remedy, including Lichen, which is known for its medicinal properties. Be sure to also stop by the Fountain if you are feeling under the weather, for we offer our seasonal Hot Violet Limeaides, which any soda jerk can rightly relay is the perfect medicine for the common cold. These hot and tart sweet drinks will rouse you from your symptoms in a jiffy, and they are provably beneficial for your throat and respiratory system. We also have available to you an arrayed selection of our Historic Teas, which are useful as a midday stimulant, or as a late afternoon cordial ritual between friends.

Well, we hope that this monthly correspondence was a warm and informative session of sorts between our burgeoning friendship. We do insist that though it is chilly outside, you may always find warmth both in our open invitation and in our physical structures. Stay out of the cold, and partake is our virtuously valued accommodations. And, as we say every year at this season’s time, brighter days are quite literally ahead. We wish you all a very happy new year, and hope that you’ll visit us in a very near future.

With lambent souls fluoresced by the love of humanity,
The Berley Brothers and Staff.

To Whomsoever Enkindles the Faintly Flickering Flame of American Romanticism:
We proudly pronounce that Shane Confectionery, a site that has continually housed working confectioners since 1863, is once more open to the public. Between 1863 and 1898 the Herring candymaking dynasty and Daniel S. Dengler cooked confectionery ingredients sold wholesale within the walls of 110 Market Street, beginning their work while our nation was embroiled in its Civil War and concluding it at the turn of the century.

Between 1899 and 1910, chocolatier William T. Wescott ran the store, cooking his chocolates over a coal fire and letting them cool on inches-thick marble slabs on the upper floors of the building. Between 1911 and 2010, one year shy of a century, the Shane family oversaw the operation of a candy factory and store throughout three generations. The ownership of the shop has changed once more, this time the irrepressible Berley Brothers are holding the reigns of America’s oldest candy store.

On the clear Monday morning of December 5th, amidst the crisp air of early winter and the bright sunlight, a collection of those attached to the newly reopening shop gathered. Here, in this throng of those hoping to soon satiate their need for all things sweet, were assembled the family, friends, well-wishers and neighbors of the Berley Brothers. Cameras flashed and clicked away, ensnaring exact instances of joy and excitement among the members of the small celebration. A ceremony was held, attended by Philadelphia’s honorable Mayor Michael Nutter. At the antique wooden lectern, speeches were given in which hearty thanks were distributed, hopeful anticipation for success in the future was expressed, history was laid out in evocative verbal imagery and values were set down for the business that would soon be open. Applause was offered up in appreciation and the Mayor joined the Berley Brothers in untying the ceremonial ribbon of sapphire blue that bedecked the silvery front door.

Later in the evening, another group convened in the building at 110 Market Street to further celebrate the long-awaited re-opening of the confectionery’s doors. Close friends and family, staff and local supporters enjoyed a tour of the facilities, a champagne toast and mouth-watering treats! Artists and journalists, craftsman and entrepreneurs all came together for the bash, each taking the opportunity to indulge in samples and sweet wandering conversation. Glasses clinked like bells and a hearty voice came up from the throng in unison, echoing “Cheers!” after each stirring toast given by the shop’s proprietors. A warm feeling of merriment and shared geniality linked the group together in their festivities. Indeed, one feels quite jovial upon stepping inside the refurbished Shane Confectionery, we assure you!

The Berley Brothers have spent much sweat and treasure to restore the shop to its most pristine condition, ideal aesthetic, and orderly functionality. The 1911 Chippendale-style cabinetry gleams with a fresh coat of paint in the same color scheme as Independence Hall where our Nation was signed into existence; it has been hand-painted with tedious brushstrokes and detailing. The marble counters have all been buffed and polished. The antique brass scales have been taken apart and cleaned down to the smallest cog and then meticulously reassembled. The hand-hammered copper kettles are shiny and once more contain bubbling vats of chocolate of authentic recipes, set over blue jets of gas-fire. The linoleum on the floors has been ripped out and the original pinewood floorboards underneath have been sanded and re-varnished. The rope-pulled elevator has been fixed and restored (the oldest elevator in the city), the curved glass windows in the storefront have been replaced (the curved glass windows had been broken in the 1970s). Original elements of the building architecture have been re-discovered, including hinged ventilation windows in the basement and a skylight towards the back of the store. We have also converted this backspace to our Ice Cream kitchen, and it runs with efficiency, grace, and the latest and most sanitary equipment.

Period cabinetry now shelves brightly-colored packaging ribbon, and we now have a highly organized filing system for our collection of over three hundred Clear Toy Candy moulds. We have even set a foot into the twenty-first century– developing a state-of-the-art inventory system for our rare and exotic confections that we import from bazaars and markets from the furthest reaches of the globe.

But really, we must convince you of the quality and the merit of our own candymaking craftmanship; we have our award-winning pastry chef Davina Soondrum and her loyal team of confectioners working round the clock to dazzle you with old time favorites, recipes that haven’t been tasted in the passage of a century, and new treats entirely of our own make that have sprouted from the fecund soils of our imagination. So, please, we ask of you to stop by and see with your own eyes the antique glassware which once more displays elegant homemade chocolates and bon-bons, to taste our hand-pulled taffy, to bring home to your family a box of our well-remembered Shane Buttercreams, made on an antique iron fondant cooker weighing two-and-a-half metric tons, which churns the fondant in lavishing dervish swirls, turning the mixture from clear to ghostly opaque. Try some of our house-made chocolate covered pretzels, made with Lancaster pretzels and our own chocolate recipe, both dark and milk. Try some of our hand-dipped chocolate-covered bacon! Eat some of our gourmet marshmallows, coated with chocolate. We have a limitless supply of goodies to whelm your senses with. We hope that you enjoy our handiwork as much as we appreciate your patronage.
Warmly,
Shane Confectionery

Dear Ones,
The brisk air about us spills with a fluency of light. The brightness that eddies and swirls amid our eyes is not of earthly realms, but is instead the ethereal plasma of the meta-physic; it is the collective concentrate of our hearts’ ambition to be kind and caring, loving and charitable. This luminous material disperses like fog, emanating like billowing puffs of train smoke from the radiant pulsations of the good that resides in each waking heart. At this time of year, goodness culminates from ev’ry soul, coalescing into a lit and rushing river of loving intention. At 116 Market Street we have engineered a sort of water-lock mechanism to channel and put to work this flow of good cheer that each heart transmits. We cycle this happy spirit through the sweets that we craft, the ice cream that we hand-prepare, and the delicacies that we make for the sake of your full enjoyment.

So what goods, you might ask, have we to offer this holiday season? Why, we’ve several different items sure to surge your soul with Christmas glee. Take, for example, this month’s featured soda: Julmust Christmas Soda. This soft drink is a Christmastime preparation of the Swede. Each year in Oslo this beverage outsells the mighty soda tycoon that is Coca-Cola. In Swedish, “Jul” means “Yule” or Christmas, and “must” means soda, so it is literally transcribed as “Christmas Soda”. Please stop by to have some for yourself; you’ll be in keeping with the tradition of the friendly Swedish country-folk.
Speaking of long-standing traditions, the John Wanamaker organ– the largest organ in the entire world– will be celebrating its one hundred year anniversary of piping out tuneful renditions of great Christmas melodies. In order to help celebrate its centennial, we at the shop have concocted the “John Wanamaker EVERGREEN Ice Cream Soda”. This flavorful drink is made of homemade chocolate soda, our seasonal Peppermint-stick Ice Cream, and it is crowned with broken bits of our Franklin Mint Chocolate Bark. Its refreshing flavor stays fresh regardless of the outdoor temperature. We hope that you top your season off with this celebratory beverage.
While on the subject of seasonal toppings, let’s engage in a warm discussion about homemade jarred toppings: rich Franklin Fudge, Caramel, and Peanut Butter. These jarred toppings will be available for purchase as a pack. They make great holiday gifts, and they merit their own weight as terrific stocking stuffers.

One other meritorious item that we will be featuring this month is our Poached Pear Sorbet. This cool treat breathes with wisps of faintly-traced boiled white wine, and the fruity pear flavor is the effused overtone that distends throughout the body of its taste. Stop by our shop to lay your claim to this highly-valued poire glace.
Need an additional gift for that special someone? Don’t fret or worry, we will (as we do every year) be making our Clear Toy Candy! These little glass-like sculptures are beauteous and elegant; they are focal points for table discussion as banquet pieces and they taste delicious, too. Pick one up, or several, for whomever you want to bestow an especially lovely gift to.

Listen to the snare drums rolling in anticipatory paradiddles! Hear the brassy fanfare of trumpets resound through the air! What do these festive sounds indicate? why, it’s the grand re-opening of the Shane Confectionery, America’s Oldest Candy Store. Yes, Yes! Since 1863 confectioners have spent toilsome hours engaging in the candymaking craft on the floorboards of 110 Market Street, and this month we will be re-opening Shane Confectionery in a celebration most grand! ON MONDAY DECEMBER 5th at 10:30am, our Honorable Mayor Michael Nutter will be there to cut the sapphire ceremonial ribbon, and the candy kingdom will be back open for business. Stop by to relive old memories of purchasing your favorite holiday Butter-creams, or arrive as a newcomer to taste the widest array of confections that you will find in Philadelphia. Our candy kitchen is sleek, our fudge cauldrons are boiling, and our pastry chef Davina Soondrum and her candymaking team are hard at work to restore hard-earned and time-won prestige to the shop grounds.
Well, that’s about all for now, dear readers. We hope that this season brings enkindled warmth to your heart, and that merriment finds you well this winter.
With a warm heart and a cool head,
The Franklin Fountain