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Monday, December 28, 2009

Old Fashioned Glass Candy


This is one of the items I made this year to go in the goody bag I give to friends and family as stocking stuffers. Everyone LOVED it. The other item was my Cinnamon Roasted Almonds. This is a very versatile recipe and can be made to suit any holiday you'd like. I wanted it to be Christmas-y, so I used green food coloring, with some red swirls, and mint extract. You could be very creative, using almond extract with orange food coloring. Some people even do 2 packs of sugar-free kool-aid instead of messing with food coloring and flavor! I haven't tried it, but it seems pretty easy! Here's what I did.

Old Fashioned Glass Candy

  • 1 cup water
  • 3.5 cups white sugar
  • 1.5 cups light corn syrup
  • 1 T of any extract
  • Food coloring (the original recipe said 1 T, but that's A LOT and will make the candy very dark color-wise.)
--Lightly grease one 12x18 inch or larger baking sheet. I would recommend using parchment paper that has been greased, much easier to brake apart at the end.
--In a large heavy saucepan, combine the water, sugar and corn syrup. Heat over high, stirring constantly with a heat resistant spoon, until all sugar is dissolved. Stop stirring and bring to a boil, you'll hear the change, it's neat. Boil until a candy thermometer reads 310 degrees F (154 degrees C). This happens after about 13 minutes, but watch it closely the last few minutes, it shoots from 275 to 310 like that! Remove from heat.

--When bubbling has ceased, stir in the flavoring and a food coloring. Watch out, it splatters! Spread into the prepared pan so that the candy is no more than 1/4 inch thick. Cool for 45 minutes in the refrigerator. Remove from refrigerator, crack into pieces and enjoy!

For me, I did green food coloring as the base color, and then as soon as I poured it into the pan I dripped some red food coloring and with a skewer made swirls. Pretty neat, but you have to be fast as it starts to harden almost immediately!


This is what it looked like before I cracked it and broke it all apart! Pretty, huh?

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