Candy Corn Syrup (2024)

FAQs

Why is my sugar glass not hardening? ›

Keep heating and stirring your candy until it reaches 300°F (148.89°C). This is very important. If you don't get your mixture hot enough, it won't harden properly. Your candy will be soft and sticky, no matter how long you let it sit, harden, or cool.

Avoid Moisture Mixes.

Storing these sweets in the same container will cause the harder candies to become sticky. To make sure that hard candies stay hard, sprinkle with finely ground sugar and store in an airtight jar.

In hard candy making, it is important to cook all the water out of the sugar/corn syrup/water mixture. If the sugar mixture is not cooked to the proper temperature (the hard-crack stage 300-310° F {149-154° C.} or if you are working in a kitchen with high humidity, chances are your candy is retaining too much moisture.

If your candied coating isn't hardening, the candying mixture did not reach a high enough temperature. Allow your candying mixture to cook until it bubbles, thickens, and turns a rich golden color, sort of like caramel. Then, quickly turn off the heat so it doesn't burn.

Make sure the pan is level. The thinner you spread it out the thinner the glass will be. Then wait for it to set. This usually takes an hour or two.

Without stirring, heat to 300 to 310 degrees F (149 to 154 degrees C), or until a small amount of syrup dropped into cold water forms hard, brittle threads.

Provides Smooth Texture: Corn syrup helps to create a smooth and glossy texture in candies, ensuring that they are not grainy or gritty.

Adding cream of tartar when you're making candy helps prevent the creation of sugar crystals. That's why lots of icing, syrup or candy recipes call for it: it makes it so the end product doesn't have large crunchy sugar capsules.

You can crush set candy glass up and store to re-melt in oven later.

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

How do you know when hard candy is done? ›

If the candy forms a firm but not hard ball, it is in the firm ball stage. The temperature of this stage is between 242—248°F. Caramels are cooked to the firm ball stage. If the candy forms thick threads when it drips from the spoon, it is in the hard ball stage or 250°—265°F.

Hard Candy

Not only do they stay in your mouth for a prolonged time, but they can also chip or break your teeth or damage your jaw if you bite down on them too aggressively.

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.

If you candied strawberries are not hardening, there could be a number of reasons. You didn't cook your syrup to the correct temperature. You must hit 305F. The candy shell is too thick and taking longer to harden.

For storage, keep hard candy at room temperature, in a dry place – never in the refrigerator. Properly kept, candy should last for weeks.

Essentially, brown sugar hardens when moisture evaporates due to aging or improper storage. But hardened sugar is still safe to eat and use—you just have to soften it back up to a usable texture. If your recipe has the sugar dissolving or melting into a liquid, you can actually use the hardened stuff without issue.

Continue boiling, uncovered, not stirring the mixture but shaking the saucepan occasionally to distribute the heat as the mixture turns amber in about 9 minutes, then darker amber as it registers 305 degrees on the thermometer (hard-crack stage ), about 3 minutes longer.