Making Candy Corn; Tips & Tricks!

As Halloween nears many of you will embark on candy corn making adventures utilizing the recipe I posted. After some feedback from others & a bit of experimenting, I thought I'd extend some tips & tricks so you can successfully make your own candy corn this season!

Boiling temperature & time are very important to this recipe, too much heat & you'll have a rock of hard candy, too low & you'll have a soft candy. If you're right on, the texture of these are perfect.

If your dough is too hard:

• The boiling temperature and/or time may have been off.
• You may have added too many dry ingredients.

Unfortunately, I don't have a temperature to tell you to boil them at, but it's important that these boil for 5 minutes at a medium boil with occasional stirring. Sadly, there’s not much you can do with firm dough, besides try to cut it up & eat it as hard candy. It still tastes pretty good.

Be careful not to add too many dry ingredients. Often times, powdered sugar is compacted in its container, be sure to stir it up before measuring it & use a spoon to scoop it in to your measuring cup, versus pouring. These same guidelines apply to the powdered soy milk, as well as dry ingredients in all baking!

If your dough is too soft:

• The boiling temperature and/or time may have been too low.

You can still make candy corn with soft dough, the color will be easier to knead in & they’ll taste good, but the texture will not be the same. An option with these is to put them in the refrigerator to firm them up, but they’ll have to be eaten cold or shortly after removal from the refrigerator, as they soften as they return to room temperature.

Candy Corn Storage:

To store the candy corn, put them in an airtight container, using plastic wrap to separate the layers, so they don’t stick together. Do not refrigerate or freeze these, as it could change the texture & is unnecessary, keeping them on a counter is ideal. These should keep for quite some time, so feel free to make them in advance for your shindig. Last I checked, my 3-week-old candy corn was perfectly tasty & they’ve been on my counter since being made.

Ingredients + other Tips & Tricks:

If you have an aversion to corn syrup or cannot find organic corn syrup, these can be made with brown rice syrup, although they will not taste the same. They’re close, but the texture as well as the flavor differs from traditional candy corn. Additionally, the dough will not be white for the white tips, so they may be best as pumpkins or “psychedelic candy rice”, like you see in the photos here. Nonetheless, you may be happy with the results!

My powdered soy milk came from my local co-op & was plain, not vanilla. I do think vanilla would be perfectly acceptable & maybe even a tasty addition! Don’t be concerned about good tasting powdered soy milk, I wouldn’t drink mine either! It’s a texture thing, not a taste thing. The recipe has enough sugar to kill any bad tasting powders anyway! If you can’t find a powdered soy milk product at your local grocer or health food store, Better Than Milk can be purchased online at Amazon.

The recipe provided has a very high yield, especially if you cut them as small as standard candy corn. You can easily make 1/4 of what I’ve posted & be perfectly happy.

When kneading the color in, gloves are the best option. Of course, most of us don’t have gloves! Another option I mentioned in the last post was plastic wrap, but another option is putting the dough & color in a plastic sandwich bag to squish & fold it in there, which may be easier & less likely to cause a food coloring stain somewhere undesirable.

An untested idea mentioned to me is adding the food coloring in to the wet ingredients after the boiling process. While it’s not possible to divide the wet mixture in to three & then add the dry, you could make three small batches & add the color in this way. The kneading is tedious & may be more time consuming than making three small batches!

The candy corn will be rugged & not very glossy when cut, to get the proper shape & finish, you’ll have to shape each one yourself! If the ropes of color are well pressed together & even flattened a bit with a rolling pin, they can be easier to shape with a roll between your fingers. Of course they taste perfectly good without any shaping, but I’m an aesthetic eater, so I couldn’t leave them alone!

Please continue to let me know if you're making the recipes posted here & how they're working out for you. I’m expecting reports of fun & successful candy corn making parties in the near future; I love what people have sent me so far! In fact, the awesome crocheted candy corn bear is by none other than "My Sweet Vegan" author Hannah Kaminsky! Isn’t he adorable?!

It's still early, but Happy Halloween everyone!

I’ll be in New York City for the spooktastic day seeing a Martha Stewart show taping! If you’re in the NYC area and would like to grab a bite, dance all night, or just hang out, get in touch, I’ll be around through November 8th!