Star Tribune
Great Lakes! Candy Kitchen in Knife River is run by the Minnesota family behind Canelake’s Candies in Virginia
At Canelake’s Candies in Virginia, Minn., fourth-generation candymaker Sam Canelake picked up a chocolate bar the size of a lunch tray and whacked it with a hammer. He tossed a couple hunks into the enrobing machine to coat another batch of hot air — a hard-to-find, old-fashioned treat that’s the number-one seller at the state’s oldest continuously operating candy store.
Making the crunchy, featherlight sweet (also known as angel food or sponge candy) is a finicky, multi-step process that’s “90 percent technique,” Sam said. But the six months it took him to get the hang of it was a relative sugar granule of time in his family’s long history in the candy business.
A couple of years ago, Sam, 30, left his job as a math teacher in Arizona to learn his great-grandfather’s candy trade (settling into an apartment next door to the small-town storefront, as if scripted by a Hallmark movie). More than a century ago, that great-grandfather, a Greek immigrant named Gust Canelake (the Anglicized pronunciation is Cane-lake), came to the booming Iron Range and launched a confectionary with his three brothers. Since 1905, the shop has changed hands, changed locations, and changed names from the original Virginia Candy Kitchen. But they still use the old recipes and copper cooking kettles.
Fourth-generation candymaker Sam Canelake tops turtles with chocolate in Canelake’s kitchen. Before moving to Minnesota, Sam lived in Arizona, where he sold his family’s candies at a farmers market. (Carlos Gonzalez/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
With the holidays approaching, the shop’s windows featured Santa Claus in a reindeer-drawn sleigh from the old Dayton’s eighth-floor displays. Staffers were hustling to meet quadrupled demand for treats from Canelake’s and the family’s sister business, Great! Lakes Candy Kitchen in Knife River on the North Shore.
Both shops are known for their abundant display of homemade sweets, from chocolate-covered cremes and caramels, to brittles, barks and candy bars. Sam’s aunt Pamela Canelake Matson, who oversees the Virginia store with her husband, Dennis Matson, (the couple’s son Andy runs the Knife River store), says that regulars love to relive their childhood memories at the shop. And first-timers are “kind of flabbergasted” by the candy array.
“It’s an explosion of colors and sights,” she explained. “They’re like the kid in the candy store.”
Pamela Canelake Matson and Dennis Matson oversee operations at Canelake’s Candies, which they bought in 2018 with Pamela’s siblings. (Carlos Gonzalez/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
One of Pamela’s favorite early memories is of making candy canes with her dad at grandpa Gust’s shop. As a teenager, she worked at the store’s soda fountain, which still serves limey green river phosphates of the Prohibition era.
Behind the counter stools hangs a photograph of an older couple re-creating their first date at Canelake’s some 50 years later. It’s one of many images and artifacts in the shop that reflect the family and community history, including black-and-white images of Gust removing the metal from the shop’s ice-cream machine to donate to the war effort, and dipping chocolate with his wife when they were likely in their 80s. (“He came to work here right to the last second,” Dennis noted.)
A teenager died in a single-vehicle crash late Sunday in Minnetonka, the State Patrol said.
The 17-year-old boy from Corcoran was the lone occupant of a 2024 Cadillac Lyriq that left the eastbound lanes of Hwy. 7 just after 10:45 p.m. and struck a light pole at the intersection of County Road 101, the patrol said.
The boy’s name has not been released and no other information was provided on the patrol’s report.
Police negotiation with a gunman at a home in Red Wing ended late Sunday with the suspect surrendering and the discovery of a woman dead inside the residence, officials said.
The standoff occurred near the intersection of West and Putnam avenues, where police responded shortly before 6 p.m. to a report of a suicidal man with a handgun.
After several hours of negotiation, the man came out of the home and was arrested, police said.
Officers went into the home and found a woman dead inside, according to police.
A 41-year-old man was booked into the Goodhue County jail on suspicion of second-degree murder. He remains held without bail ahead of charges. The Star Tribune generally does not identify suspects before they are charged.
Police have not identified the woman, nor have they explained the circumstances of the woman’s death.
Inver Hills Community College and Dakota County Technical College (DCTC) sit just 9 miles apart in Dakota County, have shared a president since 2015 and jointly employ 64 employees.
But the two schools, which opened in 1970, may soon become even more aligned, merging into a single college that officials say would be more efficient and better serve students. Plus, the merger would likely save about $500,000 per year.
“It allows us to create a richer, stronger experience for students [and] to be a preferred college for the south metro,” said Michael Berndt, who has served as president of the colleges since 2020. “We’d be able to offer 100 programs of study, robust, inclusive support services and extensive business and community partnerships.”
The two colleges, which are part of the Minnesota State system of 33 colleges and universities across the state, first need permission from the Minnesota State Board of Trustees, which could come up in January, Berndt said.
“There are fewer students considering or attending [college] and we truly now have an oversupply of college options but not enough demand,” said John Lawlor, who runs Lawlor Advisory, a Minneapolis-based higher education marketing firm.
Scott Olson, chancellor of Minnesota State, said enrollment declines are just one reason Inver Hills and DCTC are looking into a merger. Other goals, he said, include providing quality programs, meeting workforce needs and increasing efficiency. Olson said no other institutions in the system are currently considering a merger.
It’s not the first time colleges in the system have come together, Berndt said. Nearly a dozen of its two-year colleges have merged with another institution at some point in their history, he said.
