Sweets and Other Tasty Tempters

[Miruwin]

With Xmas just around the corner, a lot of us make batches of confectionery and sweets such as fudge, caramels, rum balls etc. I have a few favourites that I will post, but meanwhile, if you have any nice tasty sweet nibbles, please add them to this thread.

[Miruwin]

Russian Caramels

1/4lb butter
1/2lb brown sugar
1 teaspoon glucose
1 tin condensed milk

Melt butter and add other ingredients
Cook over a low heat and stir constantly until the mixture leaves the sides of the saucepan
Pour into a greased tin and stand until cool (swiss roll tin is perfect)
Mark into squares and cut

[Miruwin]

Coconut Ice (the real way)

2 cups sugar
1/2 cup milk or water
1/2 cup shredded coconut (fine shred)
cochineal
pinch of cream of tartar or 1 teaspoon glucose

Place sugar, cream of tartar or glucose, liquid, into a saucepan
Boil to 236F, stirring occassionally
Remove from heat and divide mixture into 2 even quantities
When cold, colour one half of the mixture with cochineal and add coconut to both
Beat until thick
Put into a greased tin and press into shape (normally done as 2 layers, 1 pink, 1 white)
Allow to become quite cold before cutting into squares

[Miruwin]

Honeycomb

1/2 pint water
2lb sugar
1/2lb glucose
1 level dessertspoon bicarbonate of soda

Place water, sugar and glucose into saucepan
Boil to 300F
Remove from heat and add sifted bicarb, stirring quickly until it ceases to rise
Pour into deep greased tins and leave until cold (swiss roll tins are perfect)
Break into irregular pieces

WARNING. Make sure you use a much larger saucepan than you think you need. When you add the bicarb, the mixture quite easily becomes more than double its volume

[Kofn]

While these are tempting, what's with all the pounds, ounces, pints and Fahrenheit?

Major blocker for me!

[Miruwin]

Should have done this earlier but here we go.

How to test for temperature of boiling sugar syrup.

235-240F - Soft ball - When you put a little of the mixture into a saucer of cool fresh water, the mixture can be moulded into a soft ball
250-260F - Hard ball - Put a small amount of mixture into the saucer of cold water, the mixture will form a hard ball
290F - Soft crack - small amount of mixture into the sauce of cold water and it forms a freeform shape that can be bent somewhat (the syrup will also be clear)
300-315F - Hard crack - when you put a small amount of the syrup into a saucer of cold water it forms a freeform shape that can be broken (the syrup will be a golden brown)

WARNING. Due to the high temperatures and the syrup mixture, if you spill any of this stuff on you, you can get quite nasty burns. Therefore children should not be mucking around with this stuff unsupervised.

[Miruwin]

Sorry Weo - these are all my old recipes - havent bothered to convert them yet.

[Sandelin]

OMG I looked at this post and gained 10 pound ... /spanks Miru ....

/puts Wrecker's Recipe forum on ignore until after the holidays...

Sand

[Tentrix]

How to test for temperature of boiling sugar syrup.

Easy - buy one of those thermometres that you hang inside the saucepan, like I have. They list down the side the temp for each mixture, from Jams & Jellies, to hard crack etc.

[Miruwin]

Seen them around Tent, never bothered to buy one - spose I just like mucking around with lil saucers of cold water and soft balls of syrup. Of course as you are testing the syrup do you throw the soft balls etc out? NOOOOOOOO! You eat them of course!

[Melodionxxx]

Oohh so thats how you make Honeycomb. Man I love that stuff.

MeloxXx

[Turook]

Oh god I love this post.

What are the syrup balls? Sounds a little like Toffee, which I don't see a recipie for here yet.
/pouts.

[Miruwin]

Turook, the syrup balls are what you get when you are boiling sugar and water into a toffee and then testing by dropping a teaspoon of the syrup into a saucer of cold water. Its just a method of testing how far the cooking process is along the way to being done. However, I will now post a recipe for toffee and peanut brittle to make you happy.

[Miruwin]

Peanut Brittle

1 gill of water (pronounced 'jill' - 4oz or 120ml)
1 1/2 lb sugar (680gm)
1/2 lb glucorse (225gm)
2oz butter (60gm)
3/4 lb peanuts (340gm)
1 tsp bicarb soda
pinch of salt

Put water, sugar and glucose into a saucepan
Boil to 320F (hard crack - 160C) and remove from heat once temperature is reached
Stir in butter and chopped peanuts
Add sifted bicarbonate of soda and salt, stir in lightly
Pour onto a greased tray so that the toffee mixture is no more than about 1/2 cm thick (1/4")
Break into pieces when cold

[Miruwin]

Toffee and Toffee Apples

450gm sugar (1lb)
225ml water (1/2 pint)
2 tablespoons vinegar

12 red eating apples
12 wooden skewers

Boil sugar water and vinegar to 160C (310F) This is known as hard crack. You can make stickjaw toffee by only cooking the toffee mixture to around 140C (280F)

For toffees
Pour around 1-2 tablespoon of the toffee mixture into lined patty cake tins and allow to set. You can sprinkle dessicated coconut, hundreds and thousands, chopped nuts onto the unset toffee for a bit of variety.

For apples
Skewer each apple and dip into the toffee mixture. Allow to cool and set on a greased baking tray or biscuit slide. Do not place apples too close together as the toffee will run slightly when the apples are placed on the tray

[Turook]

Nummy
/sigh