Rock Candy
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make the syrup
Combine sugar and water in a saucepan.
Stir until the sugar dissolves.
Bring the mixture to a boil without stirring.
Boil until it reaches the hard crack stage (around 300°F or 150°C).
Remove the saucepan from the heat.
Let the syrup cool slightly.
Crystallize
Pour the syrup into a clean container.
Suspend strings in the syrup.
Allow the syrup to cool completely.
Crystallize on the strings.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Granulated sugar
- Forms the sugar crystals that build up on the string as the syrup cools and becomes supersaturated.
- Water
- Dissolves the sugar so it can be heated into a syrup that later crystallizes.
The step that matters
Boil without stirring. Stirring after the sugar dissolves can trigger premature crystallization on the pan, leaving sugar clinging to the sides and disrupting the clear, large crystals you want on the string.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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