CITIZEN CANES: FAMILY KEEPS CANDY TRADITION.

Byline: ERIC LEACH Staff Writer

SANTA ROSA VALLEY -- It started in 1893 with a small candy-making business in Yonkers, N.Y. Every year since, a local family has gathered to cook, pull and shape homemade candy canes and other holiday treats.

Earlier this month, four generations got together at a Ventura County home to carry on the tradition.

``Believe it or not, our family has never missed a year since 1893, even during the Depression,'' said Suzanne Walker of Westlake Village, who joined her mother, children and grandchildren to make hundreds of candy canes from scratch. ``I've been doing it all my life, and I have six grandchildren and they're all doing it.''

The family's candy making is sort of like a passed-down message from generation to generation. There's no recipe, no reference books.

``The whole thing is like magic really,'' Walker said.

The party has been held over the past two decades at the Santa Rosa Valley home of Barbara and Rick Modlin, Walker's daughter and son-in-law.

It involves some of the same equipment the family has used for more than a century, including special pans, hand-forged pulling hooks and marble slabs.

The particulars include mixing a batch of sugar and cream of tartar and boiling it to 310 degrees, depending on the weather. When it's cold, the family members don't cook it as long because it will harden too fast. If it's raining, they cook it longer.

At exactly the right time, they pull and stretch the taffy-like concoction until it is shiny white, then place it on a marble slab, where it cools. Then they add peppermint and other flavoring.

At the end of the process after the color has been added to make stripes, the family lines up to make the crooks at the end of each cane.

``About as soon as you turn it into a crook, it turns hard'' if everything works out perfectly, Walker said.

Things have evolved in the modern world, so the candy is no longer strictly red and white as her strict grandfather once demanded.

``It was always red and white stripes on the candy canes,'' she said. ``He would say, `No fooling around, no funny business.'''

Now, they make canes with purple and white stripes, ribbon candy with butterscotch, even watermelon-flavor candy.

``Every generation gets to put their own little stamp on it,'' Walker said.

The family usually donates the candy canes to local schools, hospitals, churches and charities.

The family party started as a business when Walker's great-great-grandmother emigrated from Europe and opened a candy store in Yonkers.

``When they came to California in the 1920s, my father, Gilbert Pfeiffer, was 6 years old, and it became a tradition rather than a business,'' Walker said.

It now includes Barbara Pfeiffer, Gilbert's widow, the Walkers, the Modlins and the Connors, all descendants of the original candy-making family.

Walker said because it is homemade and includes real peppermint rather than extract, the family's candy canes taste better than most commercial brands.

``I'm slightly biased,'' she said, ``but it's definitely different and definitely good.''

Pfeiffer lives in Woodland Hills and looks forward to getting together with her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren every year.

``It's wonderful having this tradition,'' she said. ``All the children look forward to it every year. My husband passed away about 10 years ago. He was so thankful the grandkids had gotten into it and are carrying it on. ... People are just amazed when they see it.''

eric.leach(at)dailynews.com

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CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Freshly made candy canes sit on a table at the Modlins' home.

(2 -- color in Valley edition only) Suzanne Walker gets help from her son Roy as she pours the peppermint syrup that forms the red stripe in the candy cane at the Modlins' home Dec. 9.

Joe Binoya/Special to the Daily News