Sweets Straight From Honeydukes

 So last night my cousin (she's visiting for the week) and I decided to try and make candy mints, something I've never attempted because boiling sugar is scary. We found a pretty simple recipe here, and our candy adventure began.

We mixed the ingredients and heated them up on the stove. We put the candy thermometer in. The mixture began to boil, and everything was going fine.

But then we noticed something odd. The thermometer was not changing temperature. We kept waiting, but eventually the sugar turned brown so we quickly took it off the heat.

Unfortunately we didn't take any pictures, but the sugar was a pretty dark brown. So we mixed in coconut milk (my cousin is allergic to dairy) and we made caramel sauce. We dipped apples in it and ate it, but you could definately tell it was burned.

 So then it was time for Try #2. This time we kept the heat very low, and brought it to a boil much slower then before. Once again, we waited and waited and waited, and we noticed the thermometer still wasn't changing. This time when the sugar began turning yellow we took it off the heat before it could burn. We added coconut milk again, and we figured out the candy thermometer was broken. (We didn't realize that the first time!?)

We decided just to try making it into candy and see what happened. So we poured it out onto parchment paper and once it cooled we pulled it (so fun!), added rose water (instead of mint), and cut it up. After a coat of sugar, we put the candies in a plastic bag overnight.

When we woke up in the morning, they had somehow all melted together into a giant candy ball. We put the bag in the freezer and then a couple hours later, hit it with a hammer to break it up.

And it worked! The candy is delicous (although very sticky) and even though we did not cook it properly, we are happy with the results! (It was our first time, after all, and with a broken thermometer!).




ps. Thanks to my cousin for coming up with the title for this post