Home › Candies › Pulled Molasses Candy
Pulled Molasses Candy
1 cup molasses 2 cups brown sugar 1 cup water 3 tablespoons vinegar 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar 3 tablespoons butter 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda Put molasses, sugar, water and vinegar into saucepan and stir; when boiling add cream of tartar and boil until very brittle when dropped into cold water; add butter and soda and pour on buttered platter. When cool enough to handle, butter hands and pull until light brown. Pull into oblong strips and cut with scissors, which have been rubbed with butter.
A straightforward hard-crack pull candy. The only real variables are the sugar temperature and how quickly you get it off the platter.
- Use a thermometer"very brittle when dropped into cold water" corresponds to what modern candy-making calls the hard-crack stage, about 300-310F. Undercooked syrup stays tacky and will sag rather than hold a pull.
- Molasses gradeUse ordinary unsulphured cooking molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and low in sugar. The "New Orleans" molasses of the period was a first- or second-boil syrup, probably closer to today's mild or full-flavour grades than to blackstrap.
- Bicarbonate of sodaThat is baking soda. It foams violently on contact with the hot syrup and aerates the candy so it whitens and lightens as you pull. Add it off the heat and stir just enough to distribute, or you will knock the gas back out.
- Cream of tartar and vinegarBoth help invert some of the sucrose and discourage the batch crystallising into grain. Do not leave them out to "simplify" the recipe; they are part of what keeps the finished candy smooth rather than sandy.
- The platterA buttered marble slab or a buttered rimmed sheet pan works better than a platter. Pour it out, let the edges set, and fold them inward with a buttered scraper so it cools evenly.
- Pulling windowThe candy is workable for only a few minutes. Too hot and it burns your hands even through butter; too cool and it cracks instead of stretching. Two people pulling halves is easier than one person fighting the whole batch.
- Colour cue"Pull until light brown" means until the dark syrup turns to a pale tan with a satin sheen, after several minutes of folding and stretching, as air works in.
- Cutting and storingTwist the rope, cut with buttered scissors, and wrap the pieces individually in waxed paper. Unwrapped, they weld into a single mass within a day in humid weather.
- YieldRoughly a pound and a half of candy; the number of pieces depends entirely on how thin the ropes are pulled.
Pulled molasses candy belongs to the American taffy-pull tradition, a nineteenth-century social occasion as much as a confection: molasses was the cheap sweetener in many households before refined sugar became affordable, and boiling a batch down gave young people an excuse to gather and work the cooling mass in pairs. The New Royal Cook Book was published by the Royal Baking Powder Company, and cream of tartar and bicarbonate of soda, the two components of the company's own baking powder, do genuine work in this recipe, one preventing graining and the other aerating the pull. Molasses candy in this style is closely related to the taffy sold at seaside resorts, and the technique of pulling to incorporate air and lighten the colour is generally traced to much older European sugar work.