Yesterday I was in the mood for candy but somehow my stash of Skittles had disappeared. I can't make Skittles--and if I could I'd make all red and orange ones!--but I can make Salt Water Taffy.
Salt Water Taffy is quite possibly the easiest candy to make. The ingredient list is small: sugar, water, corn syrup, salt and butter. That's it. If you want to get crazy you can add a drop of food coloring and a few drops of flavoring. I only use peppermint flavoring because that's the only flavor that we really like here.
A candy thermometer is most helpful too. Otherwise you might get what Missy and I once dubbed 'crack' which is basically after the taffy is pulled you can tap it on the counter and it cracks in half. I was worried that I might have made crack because just as the temperature was getting close to hard ball stage there was a knock at the door and I had to go get Rick and I actually went a little over the hard ball stage temperature.
Luckily for me it was only a few degrees and there was no crack making here! (I'm wondering what search engine crawlers are going to pick up later after I post this) At this point, a lot of butter has been going everywhere--countertop--on the hands--on the taffy. You really can't skimp with the butter otherwise you will have the stickiest mess ever.
The taffy gets pulled for about 10 minutes or so until the color takes on a creamy tone. Then, out comes more butter onto a pair of clean scissors to snip the rope into pieces.
I don't let the kids help pull yet because I tried that once with Tristyn a couple of years ago and I'm not going to share with you just where all that taffy ended up! They do, however, get to help wrap the pieces in small squares of wax paper which seems to be an okay job to them because they know I'll overlook how many pieces they pop in their mouth.
My reasoning is that homemade salt water taffy sticks to your teeth even more than the commercial stuff and that alone is enough to slow them down.
Sort of.
I twist the snipped pieces into these 'rose' shapes just because they are pretty and fit into the wax paper squares a bit better. When I make taffy I strive to make them all into taffy roses but depending on the temperature of the kitchen, my patience level and outside annoyances a different percentage everytime gets made into roses and and the rest into little twisted blobs.
Bowl of Candy - 'bout 20 pieces!
