The radical swings in weather patterns this month have been amazing. After spending Saturday night wandering around all of Jamaica Plain with temperatures in the fifties, we’ve got another winter storm warning. Severe enough that parking bans were issued a day in advance. I opted for trying to beat the storm out of town, and got a Butter Pecan cone.
Colonial Candies is an odd moniker for me to use. Until recently this was a Hebert’s candy mansion, but in 2004 the Hebert family sold their name and recipes off. Member’s of the family still run individual shoppes under new names, but things are different aside from the Shrewsbury store which maintains the original name. Hebert’s introduced white chocolate to America back in 1955, but this store now uses different suppliers and doesn’t have their amazing white chocolate bars.
For anyone travelling south on 495, this spot is a definite landmark. A mile before the highway exit, there is a clearing that provides a good view of the mansion, and there is an iluminated red sign steering visitors this way. As a result, there are often times when you’ll find a couple of elderly tour buses making a stop along their way, and thus lines winding through the aisles.
With the snow picking up pace on this New Year’s Eve, the store was quiet. Only the ringing of the bell when I walked in alerted the one person on duty for the day. It was easy to tell that she was weather weary – ice storms had knocked the power out for 3 days earlier in the month. She even talked about almost not coming in today after witnessing the aftermath of three accidents on 117 during her commute.
I didn’t feel the need to work my way through samples, and heck I wanted to get to my parent’s house and get off the road before things turned truly gnarly. The ice cream here is supplied by Bliss Dairy, so I had a decent idea what I was in for with my butter pecan. While there was a bit of frost on the outside of the cone, refreeze hadn’t permeated the whole thing, and the cone had a rich buttery consistency with large pieces of pecan that really made the whole thing shine. It didn’t hurt that I was given a complimentary waffle cone for being the only customer (a family did walk in as I was leaving and headed straight for the ice cream).
As a candy mansion, the best aspect of Colonial Candies is the toppings bar for sundaes. With short hours, it wasn’t set up on this day, but usually crumbled version of the candies in the store are there for you to assemble. Growing up, I can recall many times when we would ride our bikes to Hebert’s and gorge on sundaes making our toppings overflow onto the paper plates below forming a moat of caramel and strawberry and fudge around a great castle of ice cream.
Cone – small $2.75 medium $3.25 large $4
Sundae – small $3.75 medium $4.75 large $5.50
Frappe $4.95
Colonial Candies
978 779-6586
Open year round
Daily 9a-6p
