Barley-sugar Drops
Ingredients
Directions
Make the sugar
In a saucepan, heat 2 cups of granulated sugar until it reaches the hard crack stage.
Shape the drops
Use a funnel to drop the sugar onto a marble surface, one drop at a time.
Practice until you can do this quickly and evenly.
Use a knife to detach the drops from the marble.
Finish
Dust the drops with powdered sugar and wrap them in paper.
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 hard, glassy candy structure when heated to the hard crack stage.
- Powdered sugar
- Dusts the finished drops to keep them from sticking together.
The step that matters
Heating the sugar to the hard crack stage. Sugar heated to the hard crack stage has very little water left, so it sets hard and glassy when cooled. Stopping early leaves a soft, sticky candy that will not hold its drop shape.
“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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