Salt Water Taffy
This taffy is really light and fluffy and highly addictive. It's more fun to pull taffy with someone you love.
This taffy is really light and fluffy and highly addictive. It's more fun to pull taffy with someone you love.
- Carbohydrate 5.82181730003131 g
- Cholesterol 1.2212 mg
- Fat 0.466691800000017 g
- Fiber 0.0126449999812353 g
- Protein 0.0099635000000892 g
- Saturated Fat 0.292218440000003 g
- Serving Size 1 1 Serving (10g)
- Sodium 6.39004000000308 mg
- Sugar 5.80917230005008 g
- Trans Fat 0.0367940399999999 g
- Calories 26 calories
Step-by-step
- Mix together sugar and cornstarch in the saucepan.
- Use a wooden spoon to stir in the corn syrup, glycerin, water, butter, and salt. Place the saucepan over medium heat (7/10) and stir until the sugar dissolves.
- Continue stirring until mixture begins to boil, then let cook, undisturbed, until it reaches about 270° F or the soft-crack stage. Wash down the sides of the pan with a pastry brush dipped in warm water while the syrup cooks.
- Remove the saucepan from the heat and add food coloring and flavoring, as well as the baking soda. Stir gently, then pour onto a greased marble slab or into a shallow greased cookie sheet to cool.
- When the taffy is cool enough to handle, grease your hands or gloves with oil or butter and pull the taffy until it's light in color and has a satiny gloss. The glycerin helps add that shine. You can have a friend help with this step (or a hanger, chair, and duct tape), which should take about 10 minutes.
- Pull off sections of the taffy to work with individually to roll. Then roll the pulled taffy into a long rope, about 1/2 inch in diameter, and cut it with greased scissors or a butter knife into 1-inch-long pieces. Let the pieces sit for about half an hour before wrapping them in wax paper or plastic wrap and twisting the ends of the wrapper.
- Devour!
Controlling crystal formation during the initial boiling stage is the single most important factor in achieving a pliable candy rather than a hard, brittle sugar glass. Sugar molecules naturally want to latch onto one another and crystallize on the dry sides of the saucepan as moisture evaporates, which ruins the texture of pulled candy. Brushing the interior walls of the pan with water dissolves those stray crystals before they can seed the entire batch and ruin the smooth mouthfeel. Precise monitoring with a candy thermometer ensures the syrup hits precisely 270 degrees Fahrenheit, corresponding to the soft-crack stage where enough water has driven off to give the confection its signature chew without burning the sugars. While commercial operations rely on heavy machinery to aerate the mass, home cooks must replicate this mechanical stretching by hand or anchor the hot sugar to a sanitized hook to incorporate air bubbles systematically.
Fat from butter slows down sugar crystallization and contributes to a smoother texture, while optional glycerin acts as a humectant to retain moisture over storage windows lasting up to several weeks. Ambient humidity drastically changes how the hot candy behaves during the cooling phase, causing humid summer air to make the pulled ropes sticky and difficult to wrap in wax paper. Conversely, dry winter conditions speed up hardening, forcing you to work quickly while the mass remains malleable enough to roll into half-inch ropes and snip with greased scissors.
