Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Buttercup and Blossoms
Marcy Goossen pauses from cutting a batch of caramels Tuesday in her downstairs commercial kitchen.
What started as an added item at the Farmer's Market in Rockford is now a commercial product made in Farmington.
Marcy Goossen, who moved to Farmington two years ago, sells Buttercup & Blossoms caramels around northeast Washington and Idaho. The operation reached another level in July when she and husband Rudy added a commercial kitchen to their house.
Marcy and her daughter, Hannah, a part-time employee, make between 800 to 1,000 caramels every other week. They sell them in bags of six.
Buttercup & Blossoms makes caramels in six varieties: original, cream, sea salt, pecan, licorice and coffee.
“My belief is you should do one thing and do it well,” Goossen explained.
She and Rudy moved to Whitman County from Plummer, Idaho, to a plot of land to raise alfalfa for milk cows.
They bought a house four miles outside of town and had it moved closer, adding a basement with a room reserved to become the caramel kitchen.
“I loved the black soil; to grow a fantastic garden, and now I love the people here,” said Goossen.
Buttercup & Blossoms caramels sell at Fonk's in Colfax and various locations in Spokane (Rockwood Bakery, Rocket Market), Ellensburg, Twisp, Coeur d' Alene and other locations.
“It's grown a good bit,” Goossen said.
She now seeks to add locations in Moscow and Pullman.
The caramels are available at Main Street Antique Mall in Moscow.
Goossen has found sellers with little effort.
“They eat my caramels somewhere and call me,” she said.
The recipe is one Goossen and her two sisters used as kids in the late 1960s and early '70s, when they sold caramels at what is now the Gateway Café in Plummer.
As an adult, she became known for pies and cinnamon rolls she would sell at the Rockford farmer's market. Eventually, the baking routine began to catch up to her.
“What can I start selling that I don't have to be up until 2 a.m. the night before to have it fresh?” Goossen said.
The answer was the caramels she and her sisters used to make.
Goossen tried it and they sold. Soon she gave them a name, Buttercup & Blossoms, after two milk cows Goossen had in Plummer.
Now she and Hannah make the caramels in broad scope, still from six main ingredients: 40 percent heavy cream, sugar, butter and corn syrup. They cook them in small batches (64 per pan) and cut them by hand. No preservatives are used.
Ingredients are stored in a 1940s-era commercial refrigerator that came from the Bookie in Pullman.
The caramels are made year-round to supply the stores.
“It used to be smaller in the summer, but it's not really anymore,” said Goossen, who grew up in Plummer on a cattle, wheat and timber operation.
They used to get the cream from her own cow.
“I did before, now I can't produce enough,” she said.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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