This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Business & Tech

"Mompreneur" Makes Sweet, Smooth Caramel From Scratch

Janet Shulman, owner of The Caramel House, handcrafts individually wrapped pieces of sweetness using unique ingredients such as beer, bacon and pretzels.

When Janet Shulman was looking for unique ingredients to use in creating her handcrafted caramels, she didn’t have to look far.

Shulman turned to local companies for ingredients like Schlafly beer, Gus’ pretzels, Lochhead vanilla and bacon from Missouri-raised pork.

“I chose flavors that typified St. Louis,” said Shulman, who started her one-woman company called The Caramel House last year. “Beer is so St. Louis. I had the idea of putting pretzels in there too because I wanted to add crunch.”

Interested in local real estate?Subscribe to Patch's new newsletter to be the first to know about open houses, new listings and more.

And her unusual crunchy, savory-and-sweet bacon caramel, it turns out, is her top seller.

This is not your typical kiddie caramel, said Shulman, 50. This is top-quality creamy caramel for discriminating adult palates.

Interested in local real estate?Subscribe to Patch's new newsletter to be the first to know about open houses, new listings and more.

“People are searching for flavor and they don’t always get it,” Shulman said.  “I wanted to have a delicious gourmet confection that people could afford.”

Shulman, the mother of two, is a self-described “mompreneur.” As her children went off to school, she worked at various jobs and became known as a never-say-no volunteer. But she always felt it was important to share home-cooked meals at the end of the day with her husband and children.

“Then I realized I wanted to start a business where I could control the hours and that would embrace what I know and what I like to do,” she said. “And I love to cook.”

So she launched The Baking House and set out to find a commercial kitchen she could borrow to create gourmet bakery goods. When she approached the in Ladue, she got the go-ahead plus a question that ended up sending her down a different path:  “Do you know how to make caramel candy?”

Apparently, the Women’s Exchange had just lost their supplier of gourmet caramel candy to retirement.

Having learned from her volunteer work that saying “yes” and jumping in to things with both feet usually works out just fine, Shulman said “yes.”

“But I had no idea,” she said.

So she immediately went to work in her own kitchen, experimenting with recipes and improvising until she figured out how to make caramel.

These days she makes it in 20-pound batches in a leased kitchen in Clayton, pouring, cutting and wrapping each piece by hand and personally packaging all of it in recyclable bags and boxes. She fills custom orders ($18 for a half-pound gift bag, $36 for a one-pound box) through her website and delivers to about a dozen local stores.

Her biggest challenge has been the weather.

“The St. Louis humidity plays with the caramel so you have to constantly adjust to the humidity levels,” she said. “Caramels are sensitive to humidity, and it can turn it back into granulated sugar candy.”

The caramels have proven to be so popular that Shulman is on the go sometimes late into the evening. In addition to prepping the ingredients (she first fries the bacon, toasts the pretzels and roasts the almonds,) she experiments with new flavors. For now, her flavors are almond, bacon, beer-pretzel, coffee and vanilla.

But Shulman said she is happy that she has carved herself a niche in the business world and set an example of an entrepreneurial spirit for her children.

“It’s OK to take a risk and trust in yourself and in your instincts,” she said. “It shows my children that I’m not done, that just because I'm a mom it doesn’t mean your creativity is over.”

Lori Rose writes regularly for the Kirkwood-Webster Groves Patch.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?

More from Ladue-Frontenac