Hard Candy

[Screaming Eagle]

This is a recipe that I ran across for Old Fashioned Hard Candy. It mentions some flavorings at bottom but I'm also thinking about root beer flavoring, maybe sassafras flavoring, maybe grinding up mint and making flavoring, juice from pomegranates etc. Wonder if concentrated orange juice or grape juice or tangerines would work?

 

I haven't actually tried this recipe but it sounds simple and straightforward enough to be real. Have fun.

 

Old Fashioned Hard Candy

========================

2 cups sugar

1/2 cup light Karo syrup

1/2 cup water

 

Stir over low heat until dissolved. Turn heat to high. Using a candy

thermometer cook until temperature reads 310 F. REMOVE IMMEDIATELY

and pour into an 8" square greased metal pan. After a few minutes

check for firmness. When you can cut and a top imprint holds, start

cutting with a knife one way in one inch sections; turn pan and make

one inch squares. Continuously cut squares, working fast, until

squares are almost cut through to the bottom. Turn out onto wax

paper, and finish breaking by hand.

 

Flavorings and Colors (a few drops of food coloring)

 

1/4 tsp. peppermint oil - green

1/4 tsp. clove oil - orange

1/4 tsp. cinnamon oil - red

1/4 tsp. lemon oil - yellow

 

Mix desired color and flavor in the beginning with sugar, syrup,

and water.

 

[PureCajunSunshine]

I'm going to adapt this recipe to make ELDERBERRY CANDY!

 

For many years, I have made Elderberry Syrup (from Sambucus nigra species) to successfully ward off colds and flu. My recipe works every bit as well as the famous commercial flu-fighting Elderberry Syrup. It contains no alcohol, so children love it. It tastes good enough to pour over pancakes. (I'll post my recipe in the Nature's Prescriptions forum on this board soon.)

 

I think if I adapted my syrup to make hard candies, it might work as well as the syrup!!

 

I'm so excited over the possibility of a cold and flu-fighter candy!!!

 

ohboy ohboy ohboy!!!

 

Sharon, wandering off in search of willing volunteers to experiment on...heh heh heh >insert evil laughing smilie here<

[Screaming Eagle]

PCS,

When I was a kid my grandparents would bring back Sassafras candy from Hot Springs, Ark. Wonderful homemade stuff that I still faintly have a taste of from lo those many years ago.

 

What's your sense of being able to use concentrated fruit juices (maybe canned stuff?) to flavor candy (grape, grapefruit, orange, lemon etc)? I know it's not as concentrated as the 'oils' or whatever but I'm wondering aloud if it would work? Outside of a batch of fudge from time to time, I'm not a candy maker but you're right. A spoonful of sugar might indeed help the medicine go down.

[PureCajunSunshine]

I'm thinking it would have to be really, really concentrated juices to make the hard candy recipe work in a flavor or medicinal way, since the recipe calls for a mere 1/2 cup of liquid (water or juice), aside from the 1/2 cup of Karo syrup.

 

Medicine lozenges (as in hard candy) might not not be very potent if only 1/2 cup of medicinal liquid such as elderberry juice is used, considering it would be very diluted if combined with the required 2 cups sugar, and 1/2 cup light Karo syrup that is called for in the recipe.

 

Hmmm...my elderberry syrup is already 75% sugar...(I use a high sugar content so no refrigeration is ever required)

 

I may play around with omitting the Karo syrup, and just going with 2 cups of sugar and 1 cup of my elderberry syrup which already contains 75% sugar...

 

Aaiiee! That's a lot of sugar, but I guess that's pretty much what any hard candy is...almost solid sugar.

 

 

[Leah]

This one is a little different, I use it every year - Easy...

Candy Coal

 

2 cups sugar

3/4 cup light corn syrup

1/2 tsp. black paste food coloring

1/2 cup water

1 tsp. anise extract or flavor of choice

 

Line 8" square baking pan with foil, extending edges over sides of pan. Lightly grease foil with butter.

Combine sugar, corn syrup and water into heavy 2-quart saucepan. Stir over medium-low heat until sugar is dissolved and mixture comes to a boil, being careful not to splash sugar mixture on side of pan. Carefully clip candy thermometer to side of pan (do not let bulb touch bottom of pan). Cook about 15 minutes until thermometer registers 290 degrees F., without stirring. Immediately remove from heat. Stir in extract and food coloring. Pour mixture into prepared pan.

Cool completely. Lift candy out of pan using foil. Place candy between 2 layers of heavy-duty foil. Pound with mallet to break candy into 1-2" pieces.

[Screaming Eagle]

So, are there common flavorings (fruit flavorings for example) that are in 'oil' or some other concentrated form that could be used to flavor candy? There must be. I want Jolly Rancher's recipe!!! Yeah, that's it. My own JR Green Apple recipe. That's the ticket!!!.

 

Seriously, there must be oils like that available for something because the commercial folks use it. Even if you had to buy it by the gallon it would probably store forever, right? Anybody ever looked around for that kind of stuff?

[PureCajunSunshine]

There are gazillions of candy flavoring concentrates, in every flavor imaginable..

 

I know this because I bought a couple dozen tiny bottles of different flavors, many years ago at a salvage grocery. At the time, I used them to flavor jams and jellies. They were so concentrated that just a few drops could flavor a whole pot of whatever I wanted...

 

Imagine whole jars of every Jelly Bean flavor ever invented. And then some. Even chocolate creme de menthe! Making custom flavor combinations was fun.

 

I wish I had some of those concentrated candy flavorings now (they're long gone). I can't even remember the brand name...but it was not a name I had seen before, or since.

 

[Leah]

Sure! You can find candy flavorings in any Michaels or JoAnne Fabrics. Anywhere they sell candy makings should have them. They are not expensive at all.

[Jewlzm]

hmm PCS wanna sell me some of your elderberry syrup

[Screaming Eagle]

Hey, I think I like this place.

[bidy]

This is the best place to get flavored oils as well as other great cooking and crafting ingredients:

 

http://www.lorannoils.com/Products.asp?Cat...Name=Flavorings

 

 

[Jewlzm]

LOL Screaming Eagle. You had doubts?

[PureCajunSunshine]

That's IT!!!!! That's the stuff I used to have!!!! The very same!!

http://www.lorannoils.com/Products.asp?Cat...Name=Flavorings

 

Thanks for posting that link, Bidy!!!! They have everything for the serious candymaker...even the pretty foil wrappers. I can vouch for the top quality of their oils. Oh! All those flavors!

 

 

Yanno, making your own hard candies is a great idea, because:

 

1. You can make your own without all the harmful high-fructose junk (sugar is bad, but high fructose is worse)

 

2. You can truly customize your own flavors.

 

3. You can make real honest-to-goodness medicinal herbal drops; the real thing, not just artificially flavored stuff! I plan to make decoctions of several different kinds, to make the "candy" with: elderberry, honey and lemon, horehound, licorice root, slippery elm bark, and real honest to goodness wild cherry!

 

 

 

[PureCajunSunshine]

Originally Posted By: jewlzm

hmm PCS wanna sell me some of your elderberry syrup

LOL!!! LOL!! You have no idea how many peeps ask me that, especially the ones who know me in RL. This stuff really does work (in my opinion, better than any alcohol extract).

I will post the recipe soon on my site (link below), and on this board, in the Nature's Prescriptions forum!

[PureCajunSunshine]

For the diabetics:

 

http://www.lorannoils.com/Productsdetail.a...=hardcandymixes

 

 

Gourmet - Hard Candy Mixes

HARD CANDY MIX - SUGAR FREE

Just add one 1-dram bottle of any flavoring!

Makes 1 1/2 pounds of hard candy

 

LorAnn’s Sugar-Free Hard Candy Mix is made from two unique sugar replacers, Isomalt and Splenda. Combined with LorAnn’s Gourmet Flavorings you can make great-tasting hard candy with half the calories of sugar. Isomalt, the primary ingredient, is exclusively made from beet sugar. It’s tooth friendly. it’s also suitable for diabetics as it does not increase blood glucose or insulin levels... no unpleasant aftertaste.

 

Each $8.99

[Violet]

Thank you for the post. That is so nice to know, since I am diabetic.

 

[westbrook]

bump

[Leah]

Bumping because there must be a naughty boy or girl (or one you want to tease) who needs to have some lumps of coal in his/her stocking.