Cinnamon Candy

My big sister, over at Burnt Toast likes to give me challenges for Simple Cooking. The other day she challenged me to make a Cinnamon Candy recipe she found. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! I love candy, particularly cinnamon candy. This was a really great and fun recipe. And like the goal of the blog says, simple! You can find the original recipe here.

So lets get started!

Ingredients:

2 cups of sugar

1 cup of water

1/2 cup of light corn syrup

1/2 a tsp cinnamon extract

1/2 a tsp red food coloring

You will also need a candy thermometor. You can get one at Walmart for just under four dollars. :)

Alright! So lets get started. In a pot start cooking the water, sugar, and corn syrup on a medium heat.

Let it cook to a boil on the medium heat, we wanna heat this up slowly. As it rises to boiling be sure to stir it occasionally. Once boiling, place a lid over it and let it cook for three minuets. Go a head and take the lip off then and turn the heat to a medium/high heat. From here on out let it boil, and do not stir. The mixture will thicken severely as it boils. Use your candy thermometer to check the temperature. You want it to be at 310 Fahrenheit, also known as the Hard Crack Point. It will take about 15-20 minuets for it to reach that point, just keep an eye on the thermometer.

Once it's reached the hard crack point, remove the pot from heat and add in your cinnamon extract and red food coloring. Mix well and fast, and be sure it's all well away from your face as the fumes will be strong.

Quickly pour onto a greased baking sheet and using a spatula spread it out so it cover the whole surface.

Using a sharp knife, or a pizza cutter, start to score the sheet of liquid candy into roughly one inch squares. You can cut them as big or as small as you like, however. The gel will trying to form back together, you just have to keep repeating the scoring lines until it's cooled enough for the lines to stay in place. I had some issues with it pushing around on the sheet so mine are all deformed, but the over all shape really doesn't matter.

Let it sit at room temperature till it's completely cooled and hardened. This only takes about ten minuets or so, not too long at all. The pieces break apart easily into their squares, like sugar glass, and that is all there is to it!

The texture is the same you would get in say, jolly ranchers, and things, so just by changing the flavore of the extract this recipe opens up a lot of candies to you, if you want to make others.

Note about the cinnamon, I felt the flavor wasn't enough for me, next time I'll probably add a full teaspoon instead of just half, but it's still very good.

LEFTOVERS! This makes a lot candy.

Who will like this: Children will love this! It's homemade candy, I don't think any kid wouldn't like it! Also, anyone who enjoys cinnamon flavored candy!

That's all there is to it my loves! Go out and enjoy the cinnamon goodness that is this candy!