The Shady Cove Candies Story

 Imagine a giant apricot tree, branches heavy with enormous orange fruit; bushels and bushels and bushels of over-sized Blenheim apricots in full blush in the sunshine; luscious and pleading to be plucked, tasted and shared.

This was the vision that drew a young housewife, in the late 70’s, into experimenting with a large amount of surplus fruit and finding ways to transform this surplus into delectable sweets to share with family and friends. As the days, weeks and months flew by, she became more and more skilled at extracting flavor and goodness from this fruit and transforming it into fudge and other candies that began to cause a stir in her community.

Soon she began to hear about state and local fairs where people displayed their skills and talents, competing for ribbons and honors with their own proprietary candy formulas. First there were the top honors locally for fudges and brittles. Within a few short years, she won Best of Show honors at the state fair for hand-dipped chocolates. And then they came; the students, gourmands, candy industry leaders and more, wanting to know what she knew about sugar and chocolate chemistry and wanting her to share her skill and knowledge.

This young and accomplished housewife was Jane Hagan, one of the founders of Shady Cove Candies. What was a hobby expanded quickly into standing room only classes through the local community college and adult education systems, consulting work with one of the finest chocolate manufacturers in the country, rubbing shoulders with famous chefs and gourmands at chocolate festivals in San Francisco, and demonstrations in Macy’s Basement.

A specialty candy business was the next logical step but circumstances conspired to put that dream on a back burner until recently when she met, married and teamed up with Bud Rees, a TV engineer and cameraman who had plenty of business experience running his own retail business selling computers. In 2004 they moved to Shady Cove, Oregon, where over the past several months, they have put together the building blocks of Shady Cove Candies, a specialty candy company, producing hand-crafted confections out of their certified kitchen on the Rogue  River.

Their luscious truffles, fudges, toffee and dipped fruits and nuts, are hand-made the old-fashioned way, with a minimum of equipment, using only the finest natural ingredients. Fudge, made with thick, rich cream. English toffee, containing only butter, sugar, chocolate and almonds. Truffles, bursting with the flavors of Oregon; marionberries, hazelnuts, honey, and pinot noir.

The one concession Jane has made to automation has been the purchase of a small tempering machine. For years, she tempered chocolate by hand on a marble slab, having learned the technique from the hand-dippers at a small chocolate shop near where she lived in the 1970’s. Today she recognizes that she can produce more of her luscious candies for the market she has found here in Southern Oregon with the help of this modern convenience.

Shady Cove Candies is in business to develop, manufacture and sell hand-crafted, high-quality confections, using only pure natural ingredients. Our goal is to share our love of the best the confectioner has to offer with our Rogue Valley community, as well as to demonstrate to demanding chocolate palates around the world what Southern Oregon can do to satisfy those demands.