52 Something News: New #51: Make Candy Canes

Really, how hard could this be? Candy canes are practically thrown at you all Christmas, and if you do want to actually buy one of the sweet sticks yourself, they cost like 10 cents. So in my mind they must be really easy to make too. But no. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Not at all. In fact, this was the hardest endeavor I've ever taken on in the kitchen. To summarize, my candy cane making feat ended with little more than burnt hands, messy pans and something I'm calling "snowman poo."

I used a seemingly easy recipe on About.com. It called for: 3 cups sugar, 1 cup corn syrup, 1/4 cup water and 1/2 tsp peppermint extract. I can handle that. First I had to melt the sugar and corn syrup together over the stove. This made a bubbling concoction that looked more like dangerous acid than melted sweetness.

Bubble bubble

Once it reached 285 degrees, I took the mix off the burner and stirred in the peppermint extract. That'll wake you up! My eyes were watering. Then I dripped in some food coloring. For batch one I stuck with white, then purple and finally red.

Then things got really tricky. And sticky. And hot. I was supposed to pour the goop on a board and "pull" the candy. Hmm. Well I had watched the little You Tube movie about how to do this, and have also ogled at enough taffy stands in my life to know the basics of how it works. Stretch out the candy, fold it over itself and repeat. The theory is simple enough, yet actually acting on it is anything but. First of all, this stuff is STICKY. It wouldn't really move around the pan. And when it was apparently time to pick it up and pull by hand, the goop was wayyyy too hot to handle. I tried to pull through the pain, but no matter how fast I moved, it would always eventually burn my hand and leave me screaming.

Danger: liquid candy cane is very hot and may cause burns

Without any other solution presenting itself, I started working little pieces of the syrup. The small bits would cool a little quicker, and I could actually roll them out and shape them into tiny canes. However, in doing this I neglected the rest of the batch, which soon cooled and hardened in the pan. This is how the snowman poo came about. With my candy canes a dying dream, I decided to just smash up what was left and create little white clusters. They may not look like much, but at least they still taste good.