I became enamored of the idea of making hard candy at home after watching a number of hypnotic videos about making custom hard candy. While I was wise enough to not pursue something as ambitious as that on my first try, I figured making some basic hard candy would be a good start.

I ordered an assortment of flavoring oils from lorann, and followed their recipe. It went surprisingly smoothly, and with a little practice, we churned out about 20 pounds of candy this season.

For some flavors, I used a little bit of citric acid, but I found that if I added it while the mixture was still in the pan, it gave a really unpleasant, bitter taste to the candy, and also made it chewy rather than crunchy. What worked best was to sprinkle a very small amount on top of the mixture once it had been poured into the tray and then swirling it around to combine it.

Rather than smash the hardened sheet after cooling, we also found it easiest to just emboss the cooling sheet with a butter knife to make a grid. This made it easy to separate, and gave a nice consistent size to each piece. The trickiest part about it was to pick the right time to do it – too hot and the candy fuses back together, but too cold and it’s impossible to make an impression.