Bryan was NOT meant to be a pioneer

I don't remember how we got on the conversation, but Bryan said he has never pulled taffy before and he was bummed out because he was suppose to pull taffy at his ward's pioneer trek when he was 13. He went and got a "really cool" pie tin because they told them to bring one, and was so excited. Apparently all they did was melt down caramel and have them pretend to pull it. So he felt cheated (the candle-making was a bad experience too, but he won't go into detail about that one. He just said he really doesn't want to do that again).

We pulled taffy all the time growing up, got to mix in our own flavoring and colors and it was always fun, so I felt I needed to rectify the situation and give Bryan a good taffy pulling experience. He kept insisting he wanted it to turn out like laffy taffy, so I told him I'd try really hard to do that.

So we did it last night. I made the taffy and the first batch boiled too long and ended up like suckers. So I tried again and it made a great batch - the perfect consistency. I pour it into the pie tins and we each add our flavors and colors (we also added sugar crystals to make it more like the laffy taffy bars) and started pulling. Bryan was.......uncoordinated. The proper taffy pulling technique is to just use the tips of your fingers and use only your thumb, and first two or three fingers. Bryan had it in a lump, pushing it around with the palm of his hand, had it all gooey all over his arms - it was ridiculous. So I got mine to the point where it was almost done, he just had to do a couple of pulls and that was it. So I switch him and start trying to get his into something workable.

While I was working on his, I look up and instead of doing nice, long stretches of pull, it was coming apart. I had never, ever seen that. I've pulled taffy probably 50 times in my life on my own time, plus I worked at a candy kiosk in the mall for about 6 months when I was 16 and had to put the taffy on the pull machine every day and I had NEVER seen someone mess up taffy that bad.

This is what taffy is suppose to look like after being properly pulled

This was Bryan's.


Somehow, he turned it back into sugar. He would have made an awful pioneer.