Sauce maker’s work is not all sweet

Sure, she has a built-in fan base with three small children taste testing her bittersweet chocolate or peanut butter fudge, but her days are spent lifting 100-pound bags of sugar and cocoa. And toiling over 200-pound batches of bubbling caramel in a skillet requires 14-hour days in a shared community kitchen. Not to mention sterilizing the jars, labeling, boxing, storing, and delivering the product. “You’re the accountant, manufacturer, sales person, marketer, and bottle washer,’’ said Harder.

Harder’s Sassy Sauces are available at gourmet stores such as Whole Foods Market, as well as online. But she also makes the rounds of local farmers markets, where she encounters other locally grown food producers. “The gourmet food network is a little subculture; we are always sharing information,’’ Harder said.

Why sauces and not something else?

There are plenty of all-natural cookies, bakeries, and sweets in the marketplace, as well as hot sauces or barbecue sauces. But when I started my business three years ago, there weren’t a lot of all-natural dessert sauces that were locally sourced. I didn’t want my kids to eat a sauce that tasted like chemicals.

What was the first batch you made?

I made some chocolate and caramel sauces as a Christmas gift, and my husband’s co-worker actually liked it so much, he ate half the jar with his fingers on the way home.

What goes into a business that you didn’t realize? It’s been very eye opening, from getting the licensing to start a wholesale food business in Massachusetts to finding a commercial kitchen that had all the equipment I needed.

Do your three kids get to eat all the chocolate sauce they want?

Well, you can put the sauces over ice cream or fruit, blend it into milkshakes, or eat it plain, but I can’t let them have this treat every single night in our house. I have to put some limits on it.