12 Days of Yummies: Hard Candy

Day 12

Sadly this is the 12th day of my 12 Days of Yummies, but do not fret, there is still more to come (we've still got 2 more weeks until Christmas and then we still have New Years!)!  

I have vivid memories of making this candy at Christmas time. My mom would make the candy, then we would cut it with scissors. We had to butter-down our hands and the candy was pretty hot. If we weren’t careful, the candy would fly and stick to our pajamas and socks. For some reason I remember coating them with powdered sugar, so I’m sure you could do that if you want. We would have jars of it, but the root beer flavor was definitely always the first to disappear!

(photo courtesy of flickr)

• 2 cups sugar
  
• 1 cup water
  
• 3/4 cup light corn syrup
  
• food coloring*
  
• 1/2 tsp flavoring
  

Mix sugar, water, and corn syrup together and cook to 300° on candy thermometer. Remove from heat; add coloring and flavoring and mix well. Pour onto a well-greased plate or pan. The moment candy is cool enough to touch, cut into 1/2” strips with scissors; then cut the strips into tiny chunks.

The ideal setup is to have one person cut th estrips and the others snip off the individual pieces. Have lots of margarine available for protecting fingers from hot syrup strips. Drop newly cut chunks on aluminum foil or greased pizza or cookie sheets.

A few color-flavor combinations:
Green-wintergreen

• Blue-clove or berry
  
• Clear-peppermint
  
• Orange-orange 
  
• Yellow-lemon or butterscotch
  
• Red-cinnamon
  
• Pink-strawberry or watermelon
  
• Brown-rootbeer
  

Julie R.

AG, CA