The Aplets & Cotlets Candy Kitchen is located off Highway 2 in Cashmere. Tour hours are: April– December from 8:00 to 5:30 p.m., Monday – Friday and 10:00 a.m to 4 p.m, Saturday and Sunday; January – March 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday – Friday. Come and enjoy a taste sensation at the Aplets and Cotlets Candy Kitchen! For more information, call (509) 782-2191 or visit www.libertyorchards.com

Take the tastiest tour in Washington at the Aplets & Cotlets Candy Kitchen. It’s an experience that will delight the whole family.

Just after the turn of the century, a young Armenian named Armen Tertsagian emigrated from the Near East to the United States, working his way from Ellis Island across the rugged continent to the infant city of Seattle. There he met Mark Balaban, another young Armenian who was visiting from England. It wasn't long before the two became fast friends and decided to venture into business together. It was here, in the fertile Vale of Cashmere that they settled, purchasing an apple farm which they named Liberty Orchards in honor of their new homeland.

Times were tough for most orchardists in 1918, so Mark and Armen searched for new ways to make use of their surplus fruit. Apple dehydration seemed a logical first move and, coinciding with the onset of World War I, Northwest Evaporating was born. This new enterprise not only assisted the local farmers, but helped the war effort by providing "an apple a day" for the boys "over there". Other successes for Liberty Orchards included "Applum"- a delicious jam made from apples and plums, and a local cannery named Wenatchee Valley Foods.

The cannery, Mark & Armen's main business in the 1930s and 1940s, grew so rapidly that Mark's nephew, John Chakirian, was invited to join the company. During that same period, another use for surplus fruit occurred to Mark and Armen. Why not use apples to make Rahat Locoum, the popular near eastern candy they had loved as children? After much "research and development" on the kitchen stove, they perfected a delicious apple and walnut recipe. The candy was an immediate success, and soon Armen began traveling throughout the Pacific Northwest selling the "Confection of the Fairies," also known as Aplets®.

Today Liberty Orchards has grown to be a geniune Northwest tradition. Each year we welcome 80,000 visitors to tour our Candy Kitchens and visit our Country Store. And when they do, they don't find a large, impersonal factory... they find townfolks making and packing Aplets & Cotlets much the same as Mark and Armen did all so many years ago.

Source: www.libertyorchards.com