The True Story of Chukar's Famous Cherry Pecan Caramel Corn
Like most of our products, our Cherry Pecan Caramel Corn has an interesting origin story that arose from a real life encounter.
Around 2010, Chukar Cherries' founder Pam Montgomery traveled from Prosser, WA, to Providence, RI, to attend a chocolate pastry school taught by master chocolatier Andrew Schotts. Having worked as a chocolatier for Four Seasons and a pastry chef for San Francisco-based Guittard Chocolate, Schotts was someone whose high standards and methods Pam wanted to study for further developing her chocolate covered cherry recipes.
Although Schotts specialized in hand-dipped, ornate chocolates like the ones below, he told Pam that he offered one unusual product in his chocolate shop that was always sold out immediately after it hit the shelves: gourmet caramel corn.
Generously, he offered to share his caramel corn recipe with Pam. Like everything else that we sell at Chukar Cherries, Pam made the caramel corn her own by adding Washington dried tart cherries. Originally the Schotts recipe was made with peanuts, but Pam was also perfecting a recipe at the time for praline pecans roasted in a fire kettle, and she thought that she would try her pecans in the caramel corn. The resulting flavor was magic.
Our Cherry Pecan Caramel Corn remains unchanged to this day. Like all of our other products, it is made with premium, US-grown ingredients. We are biased, but we think that pop of tart cherry flavor gives the caramel corn a quality you won't find anywhere else. We invite you to try it if you have not already!
