Regardless of how many people across Blogland have made homemade candy corn, I had to jump on the wagon and make them, too. It is Halloween after all. And it’s a great activity to do with kids….I had four ready helpers (the fifth actually decided to take a nap….I love teenagers).
The entire process only takes about 45 minutes from start to finish. Because none of us apparently passed Play Dough 101, we didn’t make tiny ropes and hence tiny, store bought clones. No, our candy corn were mighty, genetically altered, super-sized even. We still ended up with two plates full for friends and an extra large pizza pan full for us. This recipe makes a lot of candy, so be prepared.
The only thing I did differently from all of the myriad of others who have posted candy corn is to add butter flavoring for half of the vanilla extract. Also, I waited to add the flavoring until after the cooking process. It seemed weird to me to add it before the mixture boiled….don’t you think?
1. Info for Homemade Candy Corn
- Cook Time: unavailable
- Total Time: unavailable
- Servings: unavailable
- Calories: unavailable
2. Ingredients for Homemade Candy Corn
- 1 cup sugar
- ⅔ cup corn syrup
- 5 Tbsp butter
- 2½ cups powdered sugar
- ⅓ cup powdered milk
- red & yellow food coloring
3. Directions:
- Bring the sugar, corn syrup and butter to a rolling boil.
- On low heat, boil for 5 more minutes.
- Remove the pot from heat and stir in the vanilla and butter flavorings.
- In another bowl, combine powdered sugar, milk and salt. (If your powdered sugar has lumps, sift…believe me, the lumps are hazardous to successful candy corn.)
- Stir the dry ingredients into the sugar mixture. Let cool at least 10-15 minutes, so you don’t burn yourself.
- Divide into three littler bowls.
- Add the yellow color to one bowl and both red and yellow to another, leaving the third white.
- If you have food grade plastic gloves, wear them, otherwise, a zip sealing plastic bag can be used to protect your hands as you knead the coloring evenly into the candy “dough.”
- When the candy is sufficiently cool, cut a fourth of each color out of each bowl and roll them into long ropes.
- It’s best to plan ahead when you start making the ropes.
- They don’t travel well, so if you don’t put them yellow-orange-white, you may end up with strangely unfamiliar candy corn.
- The color order matters.
- Once the ropes are made, slightly squish them together and cut them into triangles.
- Continue forming ropes and cutting corn until you have made four separate batches.