Old-Fashioned Hard Candy Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How was hard candy made? ›

Recipes for hard candy use a sugar syrup, such as sucrose, glucose or fructose. This is heated to a particular temperature, at which point the candy maker removes it from the heat source and may add citric acid, food dye, and some flavouring, such as a plant extract, essential oil, or flavourant.

Hard candy is primarily made of fructose and glucose syrups mixed with purified water, flavorings, and colorings. Each ingredient needs to be prepared and heated according to the specifications for the desired product, before being mixed together.

Adding a pinch of cream of tartar to your sugar syrup will help break down the sugar molecules and stop them from crystalizing early on.

If the candy cools too quickly, set it on a saucepan over hot water to soften it, but if it gets sticky, return at once to the work counter. Toss in a small amount of powdered sugar to keep from sticking together. Repeat with the second pan of candy.

The first candy was used by the Ancient Egyptians for cult purposes. In ancient times, Egyptians, Arabs, and Chinese made candies with fruits and nuts that caramelized with honey. The two oldest candy types are licorice and ginger.

Jolly Ranchers are also the hardest of the hard candies—they're like concentrated and pressurized diamonds of fruity sugar.

Frankly, there's a reason why Jolly Ranchers were the best-selling hard candy on Amazon as of January 2023. Not only are Jolly Ranchers monumentally mouth-watering, but the variety of available flavors greatly boosts its standing among hard candies.

Corn syrup is a common ingredient in many hard candy recipes because it is an invert sugar. Invert sugar inhibits the formation of sugar crystals and provides a smooth texture to hard candy, caramel, and other cooked sweets.

Materials. The main ingredients of hard candies are water, sucrose and, in many formulations, corn syrup. Corn syrup is added to formulations as a doctoring agent to inhibit sucrose crystallization during production and storage (Lans et al., 2018).

But acetic acid reacts only with certain kinds of substances—and sugar isn't one of them. In fact, candy might dissolve more slowly in vinegar, since the acetic acid molecules don't dissolve sugar as well as water does.

Why is my homemade hard candy sticky? ›

Why is my hard candy soft and sticky? The simple answer is that there is too much moisture in your candy. One or more factors could be contributing to this problem. In hard candy making, it is important to cook all the water out of the sugar/corn syrup/water mixture.

This is crystallization and it is sometime happens with hard candies. Crystallization can happen from storage conditions or other factors. There is very low moisture content in hard candy, which prevents mold from growing.

Quickly pour the syrup into lightly oiled molds or on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet and let harden. To prevent the candy from sticking, dust finished pieces with powdered sugar.

Typically, a hard candy mixture includes sugar, water, and corn syrup. Once you have your basic mixture ready, and just before it reaches the hard-crack stage (about 300°F), it's time to add the citric acid. Here's a step-by-step guide: Prepare Your Candy Mixture: Cook your sugar, water, and corn syrup to 300°F.

The idea for Hard Candy came from a news story producer David W. Higgins saw on 20/20 about young Japanese girls who would lure older businessmen to a location with the promise of meaningful conversation, only to assault and mug the men with a gang of other girls.

Origins. Islamic writers in the first half of the 9th century described the production of candy sugar, where crystals were grown through cooling supersaturated sugar solutions. One of the famed makers of rock candy in the Muslim east is Hafiz Mustafa in 1864 in Istanbul founded during the reign of Sultan Abdulaziz.

A supersaturated solution is unstable—it contains more solute (in this case, sugar) than can stay in solution—so as the temperature decreases, the sugar comes out of the solution, forming crystals. The lower the temperature, the more molecules join the sugar crystals, and that is how rock candy is created.

The hard, shiny shells on candies are often made from shellac, a resin secreted by the lac bug. You may know shellac from its more famous work in varnishes and sealants, but it's also a mainstay in pill coatings, candy, coffee beans, and even the waxy sheen on apples and other fruits and vegetables.