Many recipes for candy

December 13, 2013 1:43 AM

Make your own candy (canes). Konpeitō. Pop rocks. Rock candy.

Candy ginger, candied citrus peels, candied pecans and walnuts, candied yams

Here are some recipes for homemade chocolate and chocolate shell. Chocolate-covered raisins. Candy-covered chocolate-dipped pretzels. Some more ideas for good foods to dip in chocolate.

Jordan almonds. Marzipan. Calissons and more sweet things.

Marshmallows and vegan marshmallows. Peeps. Lucky Charms. btw boomf

Tootsie rolls and special tootsie rolls

Chewing gum wants food coloring. Now that you have food coloring, here are sugar skulls and vegan sugar skulls. And jawbreakers. You could also use the food coloring for cotton candy by bike. Dragon's beard candy. Chocolate sprinkles. Rainbow sprinkles.Vegan Sprinkles.

Jelly beans. Jelly babies. Vegan gummy worms. Sour patch kids. Nata de coco

Carmel-filled chocolates, grandma's super-easy carmel chews, salted carmels. Butterscotch. Tablet. Dulce de leche.

Pixie sticks. Unusually-flavored pixie sticks. Gluten-free red licorice sticks, black licorice sticks, Salty Liquorice Toffee.

A bunch more recipes from instructables: candy corn, lemon drops, sesame candy rolls and strings, honeycomb, spicy orange lollipops, pastillas de leche. Copycat candy recipes including KitKats, Cadbury creme eggs, Mounds, Almond Joys, Snickers, Heath, Pop Rocks, Altoids, and Junior Mints.

And now that you know how to make candy corn, you can make butterfingers! Just leave off the chocolate and you have an approximation of Chicken legs/Chick-O-Sticks.

Tarugos

Umeboshi

Candy necklaces, sort of. Candy necklaces, also sort-of. Sweet tarts.

previously on AskMe

Here's a recipe for golden syrup if you don't have it handy and don't want to substitute corn syrup. Corn syrup.

Zaotang

These recipes were brought to you by the ingredient fair trade sugar, your dentist, and the internets.

posted by aniola (26 comments total)

Missing: salmiak, an almond roca recipe that looks good, unknown unknowns. This is an evening's worth of recipe hunting and I figured it would be more fun to share an incomplete list than leave y'all wanting. Because YUM.
posted by aniola at 1:50 AM on December 13, 2013 [3 favorites]

Not exactly candy, but I'll throw out Ginger Milk Pudding since it has so few ingredients it's kind of magical.
posted by 23 at 2:04 AM on December 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

As the great poet Ogden Nash once wrote:

Reflections on Ice-Breaking
Candy
Is Dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.

posted by oneswellfoop at 2:13 AM on December 13, 2013

I make candied ginger with the ginger I have left after making ginger syrup. (Which we use to make ginger soda or cranberry-ginger gin and tonics.)
My recipe is based on this one, but I like my ginger soda pretty spicy, so I tend to add more ginger. After the mixture cools, I strain it and spread the ginger pieces onto parchment, sprinkle with sugar, and bake at 200 or something for-friggin-ever.
My half-assed methods lead to varied outcomes; could be carmelized, almost crunchy,or soft and chewy. Always delicious.

I'm looking forward to applying more careful methods to some of these recipes! Thanks for this post!
posted by MsDaniB at 3:53 AM on December 13, 2013

Neat.

Here's another recipe that will come in handy after you make all of these.
posted by MeanwhileBackAtTheRanch at 4:01 AM on December 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

I know what I'm doing next week.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:43 AM on December 13, 2013

I think I just figured out what the kids and I may be doing on our two weeks of Christmas vacation. Now I just have to pick a recipe and lay in supplies!
posted by wenestvedt at 5:53 AM on December 13, 2013

I've been making marshmallows around Christmastime for the past couple of years. They're really simple and (to me, anyway) impressive in a "I didn't know you could make those at home!" kind of way.

Rather than the vanilla mentioned in the link, you can flavor them with a teaspoon or so of any liqueur you have on hand. Lillet gives it a nice floral aroma, but I also like creme de menthe for mint-flavored marshmallows.

My plan this year is to top them with crumbled graham cracker pieces and then dip them in chocolate for prefab smores.
posted by backseatpilot at 6:06 AM on December 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

Peanuts + homemade candy corn + homemade caramel = bootleg Pearson's Salted Nut Rolls! *swoon*
posted by wenestvedt at 6:29 AM on December 13, 2013

Homemade Pixy Stix. Are you kidding me? It's like you took my innermost secret wishlist and made it a reality.

Ten thousand OMGs. Thank you so much for collecting and curating a work of such great beauty and inspiring me to use the 'fantastic post' flag for the very first time. You even included vegan-specific links! You have my infinite gratitude. Candy is my #1 favorite food and overall inspiration for living. This is so amazing.

I can't recommend homemade rock candy enough -- all you need is a single burner or hot plate, a pot, a chopstick or pencil, a jar, a bit of string, sugar, water, and 2-3 days of waiting. So simple, so good. For my kindred spirits who can barely stop themselves from eating fistfuls of sugar out of the bag, rock candy is pretty much manna from heaven.

A few more vegan candy recipes:
* vegan toffee (and toffee bars)
* vegan honeycomb
* vegan hard caramels (and soft caramels)
* vegan candy corn
* vegan Cadbury Creme eggs
* vegan Butterfingers
* vegan Almond Joy and Mounds bars

Bonus:
* Breaking Bad-themed blue hard candy
posted by divined by radio at 7:16 AM on December 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

Other ways I could have ordered the list: proposed cook time, ingredient obscurity, vegan, gluten-free, needs a thermometer or not. If I had thought of it, I would have given all the links hover tags with those descriptions.
posted by aniola at 8:19 AM on December 13, 2013

Damn, this is one sweet, sweet thread.
posted by kinnakeet at 8:53 AM on December 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

I was literally just sitting here talking to a friend about treats that I could make without having to go to the store yet again. New plan: browse all recipes in this thread, eliminate those for which I'm missing ingredients, start cooking.

CANDY FOR EVERYONE! HAPPY SANTAMAS.
posted by MeghanC at 9:23 AM on December 13, 2013

I thank you, and my dentist thanks you too.
posted by benito.strauss at 9:57 AM on December 13, 2013

Tootsie rolls!!!

Thank you.
posted by AllieTessKipp at 10:49 AM on December 13, 2013

Oops. Oh well. Here, have this link to what seems to be a15th century Portuguese recipe for confeitos instead.
posted by aniola at 9:27 AM on December 14, 2013

I used this recipe for homemade Snickers at this year's Thanksgiving. They came out great, and it was simpler than I expected from looking at the recipe. I overcooked the nougat a bit so it was closer to the texture of a Charleston Chew, but nobody complained. The plate was empty before noon.
posted by cribcage at 8:18 PM on December 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

Conversation hearts and gumdrops. Both contain gelatin.
posted by aniola at 1:05 PM on December 16, 2013

OK so I've assembled chocolate from cocoa powder + coconut oil + sweetener, and I know it's the same thing to do cocoa powder + cocoa butter + sweetener, and presumably it's the same thing to do it with cocoa paste (whatever that step is before they separate the cocoa butter from the cocoa powder) + sweetener.

My question is: has anybody assembled chocolate from cocoa powder + BUTTER + sweetener? How did it turn out?
posted by aniola at 12:13 PM on December 17, 2013

I haven't tried that, but I'm willing to hazard a guess that the butter would make for an awfully soft product. Cocoa butter and coconut oil are both much more solid at room temperature than butter is.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:49 PM on December 17, 2013

Previously the book on candy-making. Found in the treasure trove that is candy tags.
posted by aniola at 8:57 AM on December 20, 2013

cranberry-ginger gin and tonics

this sounds like blasphemy but possibly delicious

i am conflicted is what I am saying here

I've been making marshmallows around Christmastime for the past couple of years. They're really simple and (to me, anyway) impressive in a "I didn't know you could make those at home!" kind of way.

If you really want to start warping minds, you can make marshmallows that balance savoury/sweet enough to be eaten as an appetizer or an intermezzo before dessert. Adria did pine nut marshmallows covered in parmesan once. I've made similar (cashew, with sesame seeds covering), and they are delicious.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:12 AM on January 3, 2014

Ooo do you have a recipe to share?
posted by aniola at 11:45 AM on January 3, 2014

I honestly don't know if I have the recipe anymore. I lost a notebook at a restaurant I used to work at, it may have been in there. I'll see what I can find. Googling led me to this, which I can confirm is Adria's recipe from A Day At elBulli. My modification was using cashew oil instead, and sesame instead of toasted nuts. I'm pretttttttttty sure I used black sesame though.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:02 PM on January 3, 2014

(re: the difference between the recipe as written and as stated--including parmesan--was I think a mental mixup; in ADAeB they talk about parmesan being one of the flavours they landed on and my memory got confused. that said, it could be really neat to make a pesto marshmallow hmmmm)
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:06 PM on January 3, 2014

We made the vegan honeycomb a couple weeks ago and YUM. Would eat again.
posted by aniola at 3:14 PM on January 3, 2014