Okay, I make no claims for this stuff being healthy or not rotting your teeth or being able to cure scurvy. These are good, old fashioned boiled sweets and when you (or more likely your kids) have had more sunflower seeds, unsweetened carob and dried fruit than they can handle and are screaming for some rubbish………this will do it for you!
The recipe that I am going to tell you about is cheap, requires only one piece of specialized kit (maybe), is very versatile, easy to make (even for the compleat idiot such as myself) and all of the gear is storable. So you can stock it away and when, one rainy day, the kids are driving you crazy you can drag it all out and yell “lets make lollies!”. Always a guaranteed winner.
If you are good with such things, you can extract your own essential oils and flavours, and or colours and make this a bit healthier than it is, but the recipe as it is, is based on evil artificial colours and flavours……………so sue me!
To make these sweets you will need –
Ingredients
White sugar
Liquid glucose (known as corn syrup in the USA)
Water
Colours
Flavours
I can buy all of the above in our local woollies, but if you have a specialty craft or cooking shop near you, or even a health food store, you can get most of the stuff from them. The colours and flavours are available in 25 ml bottles, cost peanuts and last for ages as each batch only needs a few drops of each, so you can afford to get a range to expand your sweet making options.
For each batch of lollies the measures are –
Sugar (white granulated) 2 cups
Liquid glucose ½ cup
Water ½ cup
Colour 2 - 4 drops
Flavour 1-2 teaspoons.
Method
Place the sugar, liquid glucose and water into a pan and heat it up to melt in the ingredients. Bring the mixture to the boil, which will initially be about 110ºC but over about 15 minutes this will rise to about 150ºC, at which time remove it from the heat and stir in the colour and flavour. This is where the specialized kit comes into it, to know the temperature you need a sweet thermometer, but if you are a cook (as opposed to someone who mucks around with food – like me!) you will know how to tell without using one. The mixture will pass through a number of stages (soft ball, hard ball etc.)the last one, and the one we are interested in is the hard crack stage. This is where if a small amount is put into water, it goes hard and can be……..well, cracked. Otherwise, I reckon a sweet thermometer is a good investment!
Once your mixture is up to the right stage, pour it onto a greased (or non-stick) tray and let it run out to 3 to 6mm thick, and cool a bit. The edges will cool quickest and before they go hard lift an edge up and cut it into 25mm x 25mm (for example) squares using scissors (this works – trust me). Keep them separated until cool otherwise you wind up with one huge lolly! Once cool store them in an airtight jar, dusted with icing sugar, again to avoid them picking up moisture and resulting in that huge lolly thing again!
Now if you want to have some fun, and enjoy screwing with peoples minds (like I do!) you can make batches that do not make sense by mixing up colours and flavours. For example make orange coloured lollies with a lime flavour or green ones with a strawberry flavour, red ones that taste like lemon………..I think you get the idea. We have been conditioned since childhood to expect that certain colours go with certain flavours, and when the expectation is not met, you get some interesting responses. Try it on your family and friends – it’s fun!
As promised, you can do interesting stuff with the basic mixture eg, pour round dollops onto a greased or nonstick pan and press in a stick – bingo – lollypops; or make two batches of different colours and draw them out, twist them together and cut them off to form two tone lollies. You can use the mixture to coat apples, add a stick and get toffee apples. As you can see the mixture is versatile and I’m sure that once you get into it more ideas will come to you.
If you want to extend the range of yummies you can make, get in some popcorn (unpopped), sweetened condensed milk, cooking chocolate, desiccated coconut and what-the-hell maybe some of those sunflower seeds and dried fruit (I won’t tell if you don’t). If you make your own it will be cheaper, you will KNOW what rubbish has gone into them, and it’s fun.
For reference, any self respecting cookery book will have a section on confectionary, so have a trawl through your bookshelves or get yourself down to your local opportunity shop, second hand bookshop or any fine book retailer. Bloody hell now I’m sounding like an ad……………………..just get into it!
