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The success of artisanal lollipops

TF1, 10.09.2021

REPORT – Each confectioner has his or her secrets for concocting lollipops. But when they are made in an artisanal way, it becomes a spectacle.

In Amboise (Indre-et-Loire), the eyes devour the lollipops with their gaze. A sugar paradise where hands wander and touch the object of their desire. Children are dazzled by the colors and shapes, and sometimes of gigantic size, measuring up to the giant Gargantua.

Nicolas Viollet is a confectioner by passion, like his father and grandfather. Every day, he organizes a workshop open to all, for making lollipops. It all starts in a cauldron with water, beet sugar and glucose extracted from corn or potatoes. A mixture at 150 degrees to which he adds aromas and colorings. The work with sugar is particularly spectacular, especially when it is beaten. Nicolas then shapes an enormous sausage covered in colors. In the thinning machine that he repaired himself, he makes 350 lollipops per day.

This know-how, whose secrets were jealously guarded, reached its peak from the end of the 19th century to the 1960s. Hence Nicolas’s difficulty in creating the first confectionery conservatory. He collects molds and machines and restores everything himself. A titanic job for this history-loving craftsman.

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