- 2 cups granulated sugar
- 2/3 cup light corn syrup
- 3/4 cup water
- 1 dram (1 teaspoon)* LorAnn Super Strength flavoring, any flavor
- LorAnn Liquid Gel Food Coloring (as desired)
- Hard Candy Molds (optional)
- Powdered sugar (optional)
- Sucker bags & twist ties (optional)
1- In a heavy (good quality) 2-quart saucepan, mix together sugar, corn syrup, and water. Stir over medium heat until sugar dissolves
2- Insert candy thermometer if using, making certain it does not touch the bottom of the pan. Bring to a boil without stirring it
3- Early in the cooking process, “wash down” any sugar crystals that form on the sides of the pan with a wet pastry brush.
4- Continue to cook the syrup, without stirring, until the temperature reaches 260°F; add drops of coloring until desired hue is achieved. Do not stir; boiling action will incorporate color into your syrup.
5- Remove from heat at precisely 300°F (temperature will continue rising), or until drops of syrup form hard, brittle threads in cold water (hard crack stage). After boiling action has ceased, add flavor and stir. USE CAUTION WHEN ADDING FLAVORING TO AVOID RISING STEAM.
6- Carefully pour syrup into prepared molds or onto prepared greased and foil lined cookie sheet. (As the sugar mixture begins to set up, you may want to score with a large knife to mark into squares.) Do not refrigerate.
7- Cool completely. Break sheet candy into small pieces and dust with powdered sugar, if desired. Store in airtight containers between waxed paper. If making lollipops, do not dust with powdered sugar, but place in sucker bags and secure with twist ties. Store hard candy in cool, dry place. Do not refrigerate.
Find their recipe here: https://lorannoils.com/Files/Product%20assets/Recipes/R0194.pdf?srsltid=AfmBOopCSuc2uBZd_g4p4uJC9NFJIytq2x7NfUrvWRBragqfnF0CrfDf
Welcome back! Today’s recipe is hands down my all time favorite to make during the holidays. I don’t think there is anything that screams Christmas more than colorful pieces of candy in all of your favorite flavors. My mom used to make hardtack (some people call it hard crack or rock candy) when I was growing up, and the wintergreen flavor was always my favorite. I have a vivid memory of her making it when I was in 6th or 7th grade, and walking into the kitchen for her to yell “get out of the kitchen!!!” Of course, as a kid my feelings were hurt because I didn’t understand why she was yelling at me. It wasn’t until the first time I made the hellfire cinnamon flavor that I understood why she didn’t want me in there.
I made hardtack for the first time when I was 15, I had watched my mom make it enough times that I just had to read the ingredient list and memorize the right temperatures and that was that. I must confess that, while I always use the measurements from the LorAnn recipe, as I am typing this out now is the first time I have ever fully read the recipe. So let’s get into how I have always made my hardtack candy, and the things I have figured out that make the process easier.
Prep Your Ingredients and Supplies
I think it should go without saying (we’ve discussed mise en place, everything in its place, right?) that all of your tools and ingredients need to be laid out and within reach when you are making candy. The process of making candy essentially boils down to (see what I did there?) taking a sugar and water mixture, and boiling out the water until you’re left with a 99% concentration of sugar. There are different stages in the candy process, which is how you make different types of candy fudge, nougat, taffy, caramel, etc. Each candy needs to be a specific sugar concentration, which means meeting a different temperature range to boil out the right amount of water. The name “hard crack” comes from the method of testing your candy, which was common before candy thermometers were so easily accessible. The stages are soft ball, firm ball, hard ball, soft crack, and hard crack. To test this, while your candy mixture is cooking, you pour a small spoonful into a bowl of cold water. At lower temperatures, the mixture will create a smooth ball with the verifying level of hardness listed (soft, firm, and hard). At higher temperatures, it will create threads, either soft pliable threads (meaning soft crack), or a hard brittle thread (meaning hard crack). When you are at the right temperature for the crack stage, you should hear the crack sound when the syrup hits the cool water.
The reason I am explaining this is all to say, making candy is dealing with high temperature sugar that can be very dangerous. You need to reach 300°F, which can cause serious burns, and if there is one thing we don’t play around with; it’s kitchen safety. This is why having all of your ingredients and tools prepped and right within reach is so important. You do not want to have to walk away or be unable to grab something safely with candy boiling on your stove. My biggest tip through all of this is to have a pair of metal tongs and an insurance plate with your prepped supplies. I have had, on more than one occasion, the thermometer fall into the candy mix. Tongs are going to be essential to having a way to get out your thermometer if it falls in, and your insurance plate is going to give you a safe place to set anything that may accidentally get covered in the boiling mixture.
Some other things I really recommend having within reach are a knife (to open corn syrup, flavoring, or food coloring containers. They always have that shrink wrapped plastic on them), tooth picks if you’re using gel coloring like me, and of course the trusted rubber scrapper.
Let’s Make Candy
Before I start making candy, I use heavy duty aluminum foil to line a cookie sheet. Listen, if there is one thing you should know about me it’s that I have a deep love for Dollar Tree and I will buy anything I can there if it’s cheaper than the grocery store. For me, this has always included aluminum foil, because we rarely use it. If that is the type of person you are, please listen to me when I say go to the grocery store and buy the actual heavy duty aluminum foil. Don’t settle for the Dollar Tree stuff, it is much thinner and will be harder to remove. I have never once greased the foil, even though that’s what the recipe says. Feel free to, if you’d like, it would probably make removing the foil even easier. Once my sheet pan is lined with foil, I set it on hot pads and leave it be.
Start by pouring your sugar into a sauce pan. You can use a bigger pot (like a spaghetti pot), however if you are making this alone, I recommend a sauce pan with a long handle, as it is easier to hold the pan when you are pouring the mixture onto your baking sheet, and scraping out the mix with your spatula.
I prefer to go ahead and clip my candy thermometer on. This thermometer is the LorAnn candy thermometer, my first time ever having a LorAnn one! Usually, every year I buy one from Walmart, and it never fails that they end up breaking. Which either makes me cut the candy making season short, or sends me back to the store. Then you will add your corn syrup and water to the pan. I like to use hot water from the faucet, which just feels like it speeds up the process a little, although it isn’t really necessary.
Once this is all in your pan, give it a good stir to ensure the ingredients are mixed and the sugar is starting to dissolve. Please, please make sure you are scraping the pan to avoid any clumps of sugar at the bottom. If you don’t, this sugar is going to burn.
After everything is fully mixed, you will turn your burner on high. While I wait for the sugar mixture to start to boil, I prep my flavoring and food coloring I have picked out. I have a love for Wilton gel food coloring, and it’s all I ever keep on hand. If you have liquid food coloring, then you will not need toothpicks, but using them with the gel is the easiest way I have found to incorporate the coloring. I will open the food coloring jars, and stick a toothpick in it, that way when it’s time to add the color I can just pluck the toothpick out and we’re good to go.
Growing up when making this recipe I would use liquid food coloring, and I always did a few drops when I added the flavoring at 300°F. This year when I went to a local Amish-style store to buy flavoring and the thermometer, they had these pads of LorAnn candy recipes where you could tear one off and take it with you. When I got home I realize that the recipe on the back of the thermometer and the pad of paper were not exactly the same. One says to add the color at 300°F and the other says to add at 260°F. The ONLY difference I noticed when trying to it both ways, was that adding the coloring at 260°F was just easier because it made the process less stressful. Here I am using two different pinks just to try and get a good bubblegum pink color.
Here are the LorAnn recipes side by side, if you are curious. Also, do you like how I taped the paper to my cabinet door so it was easy to see but out of the way of the mess as I was cooking? I am the pinnacle of innovation.
Anyway, back to the process. I did not get a good picture of the candy boiling before the coloring, but once the thermometer hit 260°F, I dipped the toothpicks with color into the candy mixture. I did use the toothpicks to do a quick swirl around the pan, just to distribute the color a little more so it was easier to tell if the color was to my liking. If it wasn’t, I simply grabbed a new toothpick, dipped it into the gel, and did another dip and swirl in the pan. If you are using liquid food coloring, I would suggest spacing your drops out around the pan so you have a better grasp of what the color will be before you hit 300°F and need to move fast. The boiling action with distribute the food coloring without you stirring.
One of the biggest shocks to me, while actually taking the time to read the full recipe from the LorAnn website, is the mention of using a pastry brush with water to wash the sides of the pan down to avoid chunks of crystallized sugar. This process is something I can only recall doing once in our pastry class in school while making Italian buttercream. I have never done this while making candy, and I also have never had any sugar crystals form in my candy. I do not attribute this to pure luck, but rather the fact that I have always ignored the “no-stirring” rule. Now, I am not saying this is the correct way to do this, in fact I think any respectable pastry chef would probably scream at me if I did this in their commercial kitchen. HOWEVER, I am a firm believer that cooking commercially and cooking at home are two different ball games, and most of us just have to do what we can when we’re at home. There are a number of reasons I feel this way; personal cooking knowledge and experience differs from person to person, availability to different cooking tools, time, resources, etc. Not to mention recipes like this that will say “do not stir,” but don’t explain why or what else to do as seen on the back of the thermometer package. What I have always done is stir it once or twice in the cooking stage using a rubber scraper to scrape the sides of the pan. Again, is this the correct method? No. But does it work? Well, the survey says after over a 100 batches of hardtack over the years… yes.
Once the thermometer hits 300°F, cut the heat and remove the pan from the burner. Remove your thermometer from the pan and set it on your insurance plate. Quickly dump in your oil and stir. If you are using a citrus, mint, or cinnamon flavor, I cannot express to you how important it is to LEAN YOUR HEAD BACK. When you dump in the oil, a cloud of steam will come up fast from the pan and this is going to feel like you’re being pepper sprayed in the face. The mints are strong, the citrus’s are going to feel like someone shot high pressure chlorinated water up your nose, and the cinnamon feels like Satan himself has burnt your face and airway with hellfire. If you have pets or kids, I strongly recommend not allowing them in the kitchen if you’re doing these flavors.
Once you have fully stirred in the flavoring oil, carefully pour the liquid candy onto your prepared sheet pan. I prefer to tilt the pan to spread the candy out more evenly. It usually doesn’t spread fully corner to corner, but if you double the batch it will. After that, I set the pan down and immediately begin running my pan and tools under hot water to start cleaning the pans. The best part about candy making is that the clean up is so easy, the hot water literally just melts away the sugar.
Another tool that I swear by when it comes to candy making is a bench scraper. When the candy has started to cool, but is not fully cooled, I use the bench scraper to press lines into the candy. When it fully cools, these lines will make the candy crack into squares, which are just easier to eat than the murderous shards you would typically crack them into. LorAnn’s website says to use a knife to “score” the candy as it cools, however I feel like that would lead most people to believe that dragging the knife across the surface of the candy is going to have the same effect. You can use a knife if you don’t have a bench scrapper, but the top of the candy is going to be cooler than the inside, and it will drag and wrinkle. If the knife is your only option, press the knife in and directly lift up. If you find that your knife or bench scraper is still sticking, you can spray cooking oil onto it, or dip it in powdered sugar.
In my experience, the outer edges of the candy always cool before the center, I suggest starting from the outside and moving in. Often, the middle takes so much longer to cook that I have to press the bench scrapper in a few times, because the candy is still too warm and will fill in where I’ve pressed my lines. Another thing to note with scoring your candy, if your pan is near a window or door, it may cool even faster due to cold air. I had set up a folding table near my back door and the edges closest to the door cooled almost instantly and there were a few sheets where I was not able to score that edge at all. If that happens to you, it’s okay, just score the parts you can.
I typically make several batches of hard tack at once, and I keep two cookie sheets in rotation. One for the current batch I am making, and the other for the last batch that is still cooling. Once a batch is cool enough that I can pick it up (still on the foil) and it doesn’t bend, I simply stack them on top of each other until I am done cooking and can crack them. To crack them, I take a clean cookie sheet and flip over one batch of candy face down into it. Making sure the edges of the foil are not folded under the candy, I carefully peel the foil off. Once all of the foil is off, I dust a little powdered sugar (about a 1/3 cup is my preference) and rub it all over the sheet of candy. This just helps with any stickiness. Then I will take the handle of a butter knife and gently begin tapping the candy on the score marks until I am left with beautiful little squares of stained glass looking candy. I mixed the candy and sugar on the cookie sheet until everything is coated and store.
For storage, we usually use plastic bags or Tupperware. This year I bagged up a mix of every flavor into small treat bags to hand out to family and friends.
An honorable mention in candy making is something I highly recommend if you have kids or just love a good Jolly Rancher, is Tart & Sour. A citric acid based additive you add when you add your flavoring, turns the candy from pure sugar flavor, to slightly tart or even full on sour. Think of it as taking a sweet green apple Dumdum to a tart green apple Jolly Rancher, or even to a Warhead candy. My favorite flavors to use this in are lemon, orange, watermelon, blue raspberry, and green apple.
If you’re having fun making candy, and need other ideas for flavors, remember you can mix them! If you have a half teaspoon measuring spoon, you can add half of a dram of lemon and half lime for a fun flavor combo. You can mix blue raspberry and bubblegum for the kids in your life. But one of my favorite things to do is layer the candy. I do this by making a batch of blueberry and pouring it onto a sheet pan and letting it cool, and making a second batch of cheesecake flavor to pour on top of it. Which leaves you with a dual colored delicious dessert flavored candy that is one of my all time favorites. Unfortunately for me, I am so forgetful and didn’t get a great picture of this as we were making it. I hope you can see it well enough in the picture below.
For the cheesecake layer, I love utilizing LorAnn’s white liquid food coloring. This is such a neat color to have (currently it’s only $2.05 on their website!) if you’re making loads of different flavors. We mixed it with several batches to help differentiate the flavors. A few drops into the orange cream flavor, a few drops into bubblegum. This gives the candy a more milky color versus a stained glass look.
My last tip before I stop rambling, if you are making lot of batches I find it helpful to use a sharpie to write the flavor on the foil before I add it to my stack of cooled candy. I didn’t get a great picture of that, but you can see “watermelon” scrawled at the top of this sheet. I just prefer this to keep track of the flavors because I crack them all last, and there are so many flavors that should rightfully be red or pink and it gets confusing fast.
And that’s it! If you’ve read this far, I hope your candy is delicious if you make it and you have a wonderful holiday season.
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