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Molasses Candy
1 cup molasses 1 cup brown sugar 1 tablespoon vinegar 2 teaspoons butter 1 teaspoon soda Mix ingredients and boil until mixture hardens when dropped in cold water, then add 1 teaspoon soda; mix quickly and pour into buttered pans. When cool enough to handle, pull and cut into sticks. Put nothing on hands while pulling; keep hands cool. Nut meats may be stirred into candy just before pouring into pans.
A pulled molasses taffy of the plainest sort: two sugars, an acid, a little fat, and soda stirred in off the heat to aerate it. The whole thing hinges on cooking temperature, which the original describes only by the cold-water test.
- The cold-water test, in degrees"Hardens when dropped in cold water" for a pullable taffy corresponds roughly to the upper hard-ball/lower soft-crack range on a modern thermometer, somewhere around 265-270F. Undercooked, the candy stays sticky and will not hold a stick shape; taken much further it tends toward brittleness and snaps instead of stretching. The original gives no temperature, only the test.
- Add the soda off the heatAdd the soda quickly -- The soda reacts with the molasses and vinegar and foams up sharply, swelling the mixture for a few seconds. The recipe does not say to take the pan off the burner, though doing so makes the foam easier to control; stir just enough to distribute the soda and pour at once, since prolonged beating deflates the aeration.
- Use a deep, heavy panA 3-quart pan for this quantity, not a 2-quart. Molasses foams as it boils and again when the soda goes in, and it scorches easily on a thin base.
- What the vinegar is forIt is not a flavour. The acid inverts some of the sucrose during boiling, which keeps the cooled candy from crystallising into a grainy mass while it is being pulled.
- Pouring and coolingButtered rimmed sheet pans, poured no more than about a half inch deep. Let it cool until you can lift the edges and turn them toward the centre — hot in the middle, workable at the rim.
- "Put nothing on hands"Sound advice: buttered or floured hands make the candy slip rather than stretch, and greased taffy will not weld to itself when the rope is doubled. Rinse hands in cold water and dry them thoroughly instead. Pull until the rope lightens to tan and turns satiny.
- CuttingTwist the pulled rope into a long rod, lay it on a buttered surface, and cut with buttered kitchen shears before it sets hard. Wrap the pieces in waxed paper — molasses candy draws moisture from the air and the sticks will fuse together if left loose.
- YieldRoughly a pound of finished candy, depending on how far it is boiled; the number of sticks depends entirely on how long they are cut.
- NutsCoarsely chopped, stirred in just before pouring as the recipe directs. Note that the recipe still calls for pulling and cutting afterwards, though nut meats in the rope make pulling harder.