When Don Ross lost his job programming airport people-movers three years ago, he wasn't as devastated as one might expect.

		Seldom Seen, David Templeton's whimsical perspective on life and times in and around Washington County, appears weekly in Washington Sunday.

For sweet reason.

Mr. Ross had spent the previous weekend peddling samples of his wife Laura's homemade toffee at the Colonial Festival in the North Hills. "We only had samples and the reaction was amazing," he said.

After he was laid off, the previous weekend's proceeds convinced him that hard candy, not software, would best provide for his growing family, which now includes eight children.

Bites rather than bytes. Delicious chips of the candy variety rather than the silicon variety. His clear choice was toffee.

Understand that Ross toffee, known by the trademark name, The Dangerous Stuff, causes otherwise normal people to fall full victim to their sweet tooth. It curls your toes, hair, eyebrows and anything else that can be curled. No, I didn't get a perm.

For that reason, Mr. Ross decided to become a full-time toffee maker, a decision he said in retrospect "was totally insane."

"Now we had a startup company, and I had to support a family," he said.

But three years later, their strategy seems ingenious. Mr. and Mrs. Ross, of South Strabane, are proof of the potential of a home-based business.

Last year, The Toffee House sales rose by 27 percent and this year by 44 percent. With 40 percent of their revenues coming in December, they produce up to 240 pounds of toffee daily to meet holiday demand.

This year, they're on course to meet Mr. Ross' earnings as a software programmer.

For the first two years, the Rosses sold most of their toffee at craft shows. This year, more than half of their sales will come via their Web site, www.TheToffeeHouse.com.

Another boost occurred in July, when cable television's Food Network featured the Rosses and their toffee in a half-hour segment. That brought 500 orders over the Internet. Three subsequent reruns of the feature, including one Tuesday, brought hundreds of additional orders.

"I can't believe we are where we are now," Mr. Ross said.

The Rosses' toffee tale started in December 2001, when Mrs. Ross made toffee rather than cookies for a family Christmas gift exchange. After everyone gobbled it up, her sister pleaded for the recipe.

Simple enough: butter, sugar, nuts and chocolate. But no one could duplicate her results. Mrs. Ross had the tantamount toffee touch. She began making batches for siblings to hand out as gifts, and in time, her family convinced her she should sell it.

After losing his day job, Mr. Ross signed up for the Self-Employment Assistance program, which allowed him to collect unemployment while undergoing a business startup.

They landed a $20,000 Small Business Administration loan through the Washington County Council on Economic Development and received additional help from Penn State University's PennTap program, among other programs.

They received important advice from a confectionery expert and an employee of the Clark Candy Co., who persuaded them to strive for product consistency.

What the Rosses describe as religious providence led them to helpful people, product improvements, market strategies and blueprints to expand.

"They're just great people," said John Starek, loan officer and enterprise agent with the WCCED, which provided the Rosses with a startup loan. "Their product impressed me, but these people also did. I had no doubt they could do this, and for them it was the perfect solution."

WCCED has followed the Rosses' progress, and its office walls feature a poster-sized newspaper article about their success.

And one key to success is stove-top chemistry.

Mr. Ross stirs butter, sugar and nuts in a stainless steel vat with an eye on temperature, timing, smell and consistency. He reads while stirring the pot for 30 minutes. Heat distribution and humidity are variables that must be controlled.

They use quality ingredients, name brand butter, chocolate, and sugar rather than corn syrup. But what separates the Rosses from toffee pretenders is skill, split-second precision, temperature control and a few proprietary secrets.

The result is toffee richer than Bill Gates.

Mrs. Ross is an accountant. Mr. Ross is an ex-Marine. So they're organized, full of business and market savvy and plenty of entrepreneurial chutzpah. They also are guarding against growing too fast.

Their toffee is not cheap at $16.95 a pound, but Mr. Ross has the perfect rejoinder for complainers: "I tell them, 'Not many people can afford a quality, hand-made product,' " he said. Or, as Mrs. Ross said, "It may be expensive, but it is not overpriced."

Meanwhile, the Ross household is a reality sitcom: The Amazing Toffee Factory.

While producing toffee, Mrs. Ross home schools four of her eight children while caring for the younger four. Their daughter Lizzie is 2 months old. Almost half the weekends each year, Mr. Ross travels to craft shows as far away as Virginia to sell toffee.

Being a curious fellow, I offered to help them one Friday morning with candy production. As I departed for the Ross house, wife Suellen urged me to assure them that "we're a toffee friendly household."

When I reported for duty at 7 a.m., Mr. Ross was stirring a big vat of toffee lava, which, in time, grew golden brown. Once consistency, temperature and color were perfect, he grabbed the 40-pound vat, sprinted to a table and poured the molten lava onto five metal trays.

Mrs. Ross tilted each pan to thin out the lava to perfect thickness.

After it cured, Mrs. Ross, who spent an hour tempering chocolate, poured it over the toffee, then added walnuts and, eventually, drizzles of white and semi-sweet chocolate.

"We don't formulate it for a long shelf life," she said. "We formulate it for taste."

My job was to help break the toffee into small squares and put them into plastic bags, which will be included among 30,000 to 40,000 free samples they hand out each year.

There are activities that require more precision than toffee making. Surgery and building space shuttles come to mind. But I watched in awe as the Rosses turned candy-making into fine art.

And to be sure, I bought a tin of toffee for Suellen, who appeared as though she'd tasted paradise upon her first nibble.

In one sitting, our family devoured the pound, fighting for the last piece. As a diabetic, I took an extra large shot of insulin that day to counteract the calories.

But it was worth it to taste such sweet ambrosia. Heavenly stuff, that toffee. In fact, if it tasted any better, The Dangerous Stuff would have to be declared illegal.