Delights

I have protected the innocent wearing these attractive hairnets!

As if I needed any more Easter candy, I went on a tour of the Sally Williams Nougat Factory, and bought some more.

There really is a Sally Williams and her business is a South African success story. After tasting nougat in the souks of Morocco, the real Sally Williams began perfecting her own nougat recipe in her kitchen in Johannesburg before moving production to her garage before opening her first factory in Kramerville at age 55!

Her company became so successful that her son-in-law bought her out, she retired comfortably and he opened a state of the art candy making factory in Linbro Business Park. We removed all our jewelry and watches, donned our hairnets and white lab coats, washed and sanitized our hands once again and visited the factory for a behind the scenes tour to see how it's made.

product pictures from the Sally Williams website

When they can, they source from South Africa. Sugar, egg whites, macadamia nuts, and glucose syrup. Honey from South Africa too. And not just any honey. Honey made specifically for Sally Williams using bees who pollinate only citrus trees in Limpopo.

But they also use the most decadent milk and dark chocolate imported from Belgium. They source their almonds from California - mostly because the quantity and quality is guaranteed. And their cranberries come from the United States too. 'Cause that's where cranberries come from. (FYI: FDA approved, Sally Williams is also sold in the USA.)

Along with nougat in various configurations studded with cranberries, almonds and / or macadamia nuts, they also make the best Turkish delight in the world - even better than Turkey. Perfectly sweet, they use rosewater imported from Switzerland. Plain, enrobed (that's the word they use!) in chocolate, or layered with a non-dairy "cream."

And they make mint dark and milk chocolate slabs with crispy nougat using crushed up nougat and delightful bite-sized madeleine-shaped milk chocolates with crispy nougat too.

popping the chocolate bubbles

Much of the production is done by hand like popping the tiny chocolate bubbles on the enrobed  nougat and Turkish delight. But the industrial equipment the hands use to make the confections is state of the art precision custom calibrated machinery from Germany.

The quality control is unbelievable! Nothing enters the production area until it is tested and documented and guaranteed 100% free of bacteria or infestation. Their egg products especially are run through a battery of tests and temperature controls to make sure there is no bacterial contamination. Nuts and the candies produced with nuts are strictly quarantined. Sally Williams guarantees that when they say their candies are made without nuts, buyers with nut allergies can trust that the candy is safe to eat.

more Easter loot from the factory store

I love these behind the scenes factory tours - all except the hairnet part of course!