Easy Homemade Lollipops
What better way to spend time with loved ones than by making something sweet to share?
Lansing, MI (PRWEB) December 18, 2013
The holiday season is prime time for making hard candy and candy-crafting sessions are often multi-generational gatherings, occurring each year.
Candy devotees will spend an entire day or weekend making hard candy in a rainbow of colors and flavors. These classic confections are lovingly crafted for their own families to enjoy and to give as gifts to friends and neighbors.
What better way to spend time with loved ones than by making something sweet to share?
Just in time for the holidays, LorAnn Oils offers seven tips that will turn anyone into a confectionery master for festive and successful holiday candy-making.
1. All Hands on Deck
The more people involved in candy making, the better! Whether your group consists of family members, neighbors or good friends, everyone can get involved. Even your “I can’t boil water” brother will have fun participating.
2. Be in Great Shape
If planning to make molded candy, be sure to have plenty of heat-resistant hard candy molds (at least 5 sheet molds per regular batch of candy). Candy can also be simply poured onto prepared cookie sheets or a marble surface and broken into pieces once cooled. Another technique is to pour the hot syrup in long ribbons into powdered sugar. When the candy is cool enough to handle, it can be cut into small pillow-like pieces with oiled scissors.
3. Organization is Key
Review your hard candy recipe and determine how many batches of candy will you be making. Allow at least 30 minutes per batch. Once the target number of candy batches is determined, you can calculate how much sugar, corn syrup, and flavoring you will need. To keep things moving it’s also advisable to have two cooking pans available – one to use while the pan from the last batch is being cleaned.
4. Get it Down to a Science
The process of turning sugar into a hard, smooth, transparent confection involves heating a sugar/corn syrup/water solution to 300 – 310° F. {150 - 155° C.}, or what is known as the hard crack stage of sugar. The use of a candy thermometer is not essential, but highly recommended and accuracy is critical.
Test a thermometer's accuracy by inserting it in a pan boiling water. After about five minutes, it should read 212° F or 100° C. If the reading is higher or lower, take the difference into account when testing the temperature of your sugar syrup.
For granulated sugar to transform into sugar glass (yes, hard candy is technically a glass) the sugar/corn syrup mixture needs to be heated to the proper temperature and cooled properly. If uncooked sugar crystals are reintroduced to the candy syrup, the mixture will revert back to its original large crystal state!
To prevent this, after your mixture comes to a boil, wash down the sides of the pan with a wet pastry brush to wash away any sugar granules clinging to the sides of the pan. Also, use only clean, dry utensils when stirring the sugar syrup.
5. An Ounce of Prevention
Before you begin, read over the recipe thoroughly and have all of the necessary ingredients, pans, measuring cups, molds, utensils, and supplies on hand and ready to go. Hard candy making is easy, but does involve high temperatures. Caution should be used at all times when cooking and handling the hot sugar. Have a bowl of ice water on hand just in case of accidental exposure. Children can help prep the molds, measure ingredients and package the candy, but should not be involved in the cooking or pouring of the sugar syrup.
6. Flavor Factor
Peppermint, spearmint, cherry and cinnamon are classics, but why stop there? Banana cream, blueberry, black cherry, and bubble gum are terrific too – and those are just the flavors that start with a “B.” Another twist is to combine flavors to create your own personal creation: lime + strawberry = strawberry margarita. The possibilities are endless. Creating sour flavors are another option; either by adding a liquid flavor enhancer, such as Tart & Sour or by coating the finished candy in a mixture of sugar and citric acid granules for real pucker power.
7. Presentation is Key
Now that your candy is made, it’s time to package your bounty to look as good as it tastes! Lollipops can be wrapped in sucker bags and secured with a twist tie or ribbon. Piece candy can be packaged in decorative boxes or tins or unexpected containers like mason jars or Chinese take-out containers adorned with decorative ribbon. Add a pretty label to display the candy flavor for a special touch. For storage, keep hard candy at room temperature, in a dry place – never in the refrigerator. Properly kept, candy should last for weeks.
About LorAnn Oils:
Family-owned and operated since 1962, LorAnn Oils is a wholesaler and retailer of high-quality, gourmet flavorings, essential oils, specialty baking ingredients and candy making supplies catering to both the home consumer and manufacturer including bakeries, cake-pop businesses, cupcake businesses, candy makers, popcorn shops and more.
Our products are sold in the United States and throughout the world. LorAnn products can be found in retailers large and small, including grocery stores, gourmet shops, pharmacies, craft stores, and cake & candy supply shops.
