Like Kids in a Candy Store! Cinnamon Hard Candies

It's that time of year...holiday baking has begun!  This year, we decided to branch out a little and try some hard candies along with Christmas cookies!  Neither of us have had experience making candies and we had heard that it can be a bit tricky!  It went surprisingly well for us!  In about 30 minutes we had a pound of tasty and addicting cinnamon hard candies!  We'll walk you through it, but we found the original recipe on Taste of Homes here.

Supplies

Ingredients

* 2 cups of sugar
* 1 cup of water
* 1/2 cup of light corn syrup
* 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon oil 
* 1/2 teaspoon of red food coloring   

Note: We found cinnamon oil at Kitchen Window (a specialty kitchen shop) for $1.99 a bottle

Instructions

1. In a large saucepan, combine sugar, water and corn syrup.

 2. Bring to a boil over medium heat and then cover and cook for 3 minutes.

 3. Uncover and put your candy thermometer in the mixture and wait for the temperature to reach 310°F (hard-crack stage).

As it gets to 310 degrees, the mixture thickens

 4. Once the mixture reaches 310°F, quickly remove from heat, mix in food coloring and cinnamon oil and pour into a greased 9 x 13 baking pan.

5.  Score the candy into 1 inch squares and then cut through each square.

Scoring/cutting the candy

  
That's it!  Enjoy your hard candies and try out some different flavored oils!  We are going to try peppermint and butterscotch next!

Finished Candies