All of our candies are carefully made by hand. We measure and mix our recipe in oversized stock pots, heating until a clear, thick syrup is formed. Pouring is done in small batches using old fashioned tea kettles (which are no longer made, so if you know of any of these Wearever tea kettles in good condition, please let us know, as at some-point I expect the ones we have will wear out). These small tea kettles (or batches) are precisely heated to 300° F. This is where we use our most modern piece of equipment, a digital thermometer. It is extremely helpful to have such an accurate gage for temperature as barely candy is quite temperamental. A few degrees too low and you make taffy, and a few degrees over and it's burnt. Each mold is skillfully filled with hot Barley Candy syrup. (Most modern plastic molds will not stand up to such constant high temperatures, which one of the reasons why we prefer to work with our antiques.) The candies are allowed to cool, thicken and then set until they are almost cold. Each one must be removed when it is still slightly warm and a little bit flexible. If a candy is allowed to become cold in it's mold it can "freeze" in and become quite difficult to get out. Once the candies are out of their molds we spread them over the marble covered table top to cool completely. After they have cooled, we check each one for imperfections, using fine jewelers files to remove any over-pour or sharp edges and ensure each piece is perfectly formed. Each candy is then individually wrapped and labeled, then packaged in gift sets of twelve. In many styles there are far more than twelve shapes in the selected style (for example, there are now more than 70 different shapes in our Christmas selection) and we offer far more than twelve flavors. If you order more than one box of a style, the assortments will vary, in shape and flavor. Wherever possible there will be a dozen different shapes and a dozen different flavors in each box (an obvious exception is our dozen small shamrocks - as they are all one shape). Our goal is to send you the best and most interesting assortments we can. We have all of these wonderful molds; we have worked very hard to find the best all natural flavors available, and we would very much like to be able to use them.