At Aunt Charlotte’s Candies in Merchantville dark, semi-sweet chocolate is pushed through a funnel to create quarter-size circles and a sieve mixes the sticky chocolate dots with sugary pellets in crayon-box colors resulting in hundreds of nonpareils. The hand produced candy making process is tougher than it looks. Just ask sisters, Penny Trost
and Randi Oakford , co-owners of the 85-year-old family business on Maple Avenue. Upstairs, the melt-in-your-mouth chocolates are made by hand and downstairs packed and sold by lots of caring employees. This is crunch time in South Jersey and the sweet smell of success is in the air. Just in time for Valentines’s Day candy-loving consumers are crowding their counters to buy chocolates!
