First blush report on making maple hard candy

First blush report on making maple hard candy

I gave myself a 4 out of 10 report card. Mostly I could taste a slight burnt smell in the hard candy, which I did make OK…..otherwise. And I ate the candy, too.

Now I know why more experienced people who do this routinely say making hard candy is as much a science as an art.

I figure hard candy may come back in popularity, and I just want to say I can make it OK if I have to.

And of course most hard candy is just made from some boiled cane syrup and flavorings, which should work well, too.

For today’s experiment, I used some store bought maple syrup from Canada.

Now one should, in the perfect world, have a candy thermometer, vice the lower temperature meat type thermometers I have. So I didn’t and chose to use my eyeballs and nose, and just missed the best mark I think. In retrospect, I wish I had just taken it off of the stove top maybe just a little earlier (like 15 seconds on my stove top), but I didn’t in this experiment.

Now how long did I boil it down, I am not sure. Mostly I thought when my eyes said it was enough, I guess.

Last, I was using a mold of leaf type shapes, and I really don’t think I know for sure what kind of leaf one of the molds represented. I figure I can learn that sometime in the future. And I gave the poured molds about a half hour to harden up the candy, and that seemed to be an OK time.