Latest / The Monégasque Table / Edible Glitter on Homemade Caramels: What It Costs Per Piece
Transcript
- Dana: 100 caramels. One pan, one night of cooling, 100 little squares, each one wrapped by hand in a square of waxed paper. And somebody wants to know what the glitter on top costs per piece. Margaux: Welcome to The Monégasque Table. Today's question comes from the small candy businesses getting their holiday orders in: what does edible glitter on homemade caramels actually cost per piece? Dana: And I want a real number. Not "pennies." Everybody says pennies. Margaux: Here's the answer up front. You get the real number by weighing the jar, because nobody prints a per-caramel serving. The recipe I read is a newspaper's soft caramel. It cooks to the soft ball stage at 240 degrees Fahrenheit, comes off the heat, gets the vanilla, and is poured, without scraping, into a buttered 13 by 9 or 15 by 10 pan. It cools overnight, about 10 hours. Then you cut one-inch squares and wrap each one in waxed paper about 6 by 6 inches, twisted at the ends. It makes about 100 pieces. So weigh your glitter jar before the first pan, and weigh it again after. The grams you used, divided by 100, is your cost per piece. And at about a dollar a gram for a 15 gram jar, it comes out small. Dana: Weigh the jar. That's it? Margaux: That's it. It's the only number that's actually yours: your hand, your pan, your coverage. Dana: Okay, but when does the glitter go on? Before it cools? Margaux: Right after you pour, while the surface is still hot and glossy. Decorating guides say glitter holds best to a surface that's still wet, and a surface that has set takes far less. A caramel slab spends 10 hours cooling. You want the glitter on in the first few minutes, not the next morning when you come back with a knife. Dana: And then I cut through it. Margaux: Then you cut through it. Every square has a sparkle top, and the cut sides are plain caramel. That's fine. The top is what shows when somebody untwists the paper. Dana: Let's do the money. What's a gram cost me? Margaux: At standard prices, the 15 gram luster dust jar at $14.99 is about $1.00 a gram. The 7 gram jar at $9.99 is about $1.43 a gram. The 10 gram glitter jar at $14.99 is about $1.50 a gram. And the 12-color gift set, 84 grams in all at $59.99, works out to about 71 cents a gram. So on paper, the gift set is the cheapest gram on the board. Dana: And this is my round. The cheapest gram is the one you actually use. A caramel business picks a color, usually gold, and runs it all season. If I buy 12 colors to get the 71-cent gram and I use 1 of them, the other 11 are sitting on my shelf. That's not cheap. That's inventory. Margaux: That's the round you win, and it's the number most people get wrong. The per-gram price only counts if the gram ends up on a caramel. Here's the waste math that backs you up: half a 15 gram jar left over at the end of the season is about $7.50 of product sitting in a cupboard. For a one-color business, the 15 gram jar of your one color is the honest cheapest gram, at about $1.00. The gift set is for the decorator who really does use the whole rainbow. Dana: And buying more than one jar? Margaux: On Amazon there's a business quantity ladder: 5% off at 2 or more units, up to 20% off at 50 or more. For a holiday caramel run, the move is to weigh your first pan, multiply by the number of pans you've got booked, and buy the jars that covers, plus one. Don't guess the season. Measure one pan. Dana: And here's where I'll fight you on a number. You keep saying weigh the first pan. My first pan is my practice pan. I'm heavier-handed on the first one. Margaux: Then weigh the second. Fair point. The number you multiply should be a pan you'd actually sell. Dana: Now the part my customers actually ask. A caterer is buying 400 of these for a corporate party. They want to know what's in the sparkle. Margaux: And that's a good customer. The FDA's advisory to bakers says companies that make edible glitters are required by law to list ingredients on the label. That list is your first screening check, and it's the first thing to copy onto your own label. The federal listing for mica-based pearlescent pigment, 21 CFR 73.350, names soft candies among its food categories, at up to 1.25% by weight of the food. That's what the rule says, and I'll stop there. Dana: And if they want more than the label? Margaux: Then ask your glitter supplier for three things in writing: the product specification, the label declaration, and a written regulatory statement naming the food categories it's meant for. If you're buying from us, send that request to the team through the contact page on the website. Dana: 400 caramels. That's 4 pans. Margaux: 4 pans, 4 nights of cooling, and 400 squares of waxed paper. The glitter is the smallest line on that order. The 10 hours is the biggest. Dana: Who should skip it? Margaux: 3 skips. If your caramels go out wrapped tight in opaque paper and get eaten in the car, skip the glitter, nobody's untwisting slowly enough to see it. If you only make one pan a year for your neighbors, you don't need the per-piece math; buy the small jar of the one color you love. And if you can't glitter within minutes of pouring, because you're juggling 2 pans at once, skip it on that batch rather than sprinkling a set slab and watching it brush off. Dana: Dana's Scorecard. I came in wanting a real number and expecting "pennies." Where I landed. One: weigh the jar before and after a pan you'd sell, divide by 100. That's the real number. Two: glitter goes on right after the pour, not the morning after. Three, my round: the cheapest gram is the one you use, so a one-color business buys the 15 gram jar of that color, about $1.00 a gram. Four: 5% off at 2 jars, up to 20% at 50. Five: label list first, then spec, label declaration and a written statement from the supplier. My caveat: the waxed paper is still the most annoying part of this whole business. Margaux: Kept, with sympathy. The footnote: the MONÉGASQUE Gold 15 gram luster dust is on Amazon at $14.99, about a dollar a gram, which is the gram most caramel makers actually use. Dana: Next time, a party drink with a rim. The margarita. Does the glitter go in the salt or in the shaker? Margaux: Both are fair answers, and the number that matters is 8. One note before we go — this show is produced by the team at Monégasque, with AI-crafted hosts. See you at the table.