Growing up, we made old-fashioned hard tack candy.
My two favorite flavors were cinnamon and wintergreen. Mmmm, mmmm good!
Fast-forward (quite a few years). I made this recipe for our kids.
Then, when I started making gingerbread houses, I used this recipe for the windows. And of course I always made sure to have enough left over for the kids to eat.
This is an easy recipe to make — one that your grandchildren could make with minimal supervision. They will also enjoy eating it. (Since it’s mainly sugar and corn syrup what’s there not to like?!?
Just as I started making it, our son came over. That’s fine and dandy.
However, my son needed my husband to help him fix his Jeep. So they went out to my husband’s shop.
That was not fine and dandy. (My husband is my photographer when I am doing things like this.)
Somehow I haven’t mastered just yet the skill of stirring-boiling-candy-with-one-hand-and-taking-a-picture-with-the-other-one. So, I have minimal pictures of the cooking, stirring, and pouring the boiling candy into the pan process. Rats!
Easy Hard Tack Candy
- 1 cup water
- 2 cups sugar
- 2/3 cup corn syrup
- 1 teaspoon flavoring oil
- food coloring
Put the water, sugar, and corn syrup into a heavy sauce pan. Bring to a boil stirring occasionally.
When it comes to a full rolling boil, turn the heat down to medium high. You do not need to stir the it while it is cooking.
Boil until it reaches 295-310 degrees Fahrenheit on a candy thermometer. (Hard crack stage.)
Remove from heat. Add 3-4 drops food coloring. Stir till the color is well-mixed in.
Add the flavoring oil. Stir.
Pour into a pan lined with tin foil. Let cool for several minutes.
Use a butter knife to score lines into the candy.
When the it has cooled, remove it from pan. Pull off the foil and use the handle of the butter knife to tap to to break into small pieces.
If so desired, place in a baggy with some powdered sugar. Shake to coat candy pieces. This will keep the candy from sticking together.
From start to finish, this takes only about 30 minutes to make.
One word about the flavoring. Make sure it is an oil flavoring. If you use the extract flavoring, the flavor won’t be very strong. (I guess that is okay — if you like anemic-flavored candy.)
A word of caution. Do not breath in the steam that rises up after putting in your flavoring oil. Do. Not. It will burn your nasal passages! Don’t ask me how I know that.
Happy candy making. Bon appétit!
19 thoughts on “Easy and Yummy Hard Tack Candy”
I don’t know what I did wrong but I made this last night 8 different flavors, and let it sit over night and woke up, 17 hours later and it’s still not hard. Just sticky.
Oh no! That’s awful! Did you use a candy thermometer? I have found that some are not very accurate. If you used one, it might not be working correctly.
One way to test the candy without a thermometer is to drop some of the candy in cold water. If it instantly hardens, the candy has reached the hard ball stage.
1/2 cup syrup
Yikes! Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I updated my old posts and somehow a pesky question mark replaced the amount of syrup. (And, when I checked my recipe, it called for 2/3 cup.) Again, thanks!
This was a simply and fun recipe to do with my family.
Can I use 2 bottles of flavoring in one batch….just not strong enough for me
Well…a cinnamon FLAVORING is not as strong. If you mean flavoring, you’d probably be okay to use 2 bottles of flavoring. But if you use OIL (which I use), the oils are much stronger. I can take a hot cinnamon taste but for me a teaspoon of the OIL is plenty flavorful. I hope this helps.
Where do you find cinnamon oil???
I have found it in the baking aisle in my local grocery store. I’ve also purchased it at stores that sell cooking/baking supplies. If all else fails, you could probably find it on Amazon.
I have a friend who asked me to make him hard tack candy. l saw this recipe and will be using it to make him some for Christmas as well as extra for the household. Thank you for sharing this recipe. Looking forward to making it.
Melody, I hope you enjoy it as much as our family does! You know, you can use different flavors of oil if you don’t like cinnamon . . .
If you want to make big quantities of this and store it for like the holidays to put in containers to decorate and hand out as gifts what’s the best way to store it
Hi Anna,
Be sure to “dust” it with powdered sugar. This keeps the pieces from sticking to each other. Then, I’d just store it in ziplock bags. Or a plastic container with a lid.
Hugs!
Nina
I think your temperature is off. 275°F is a soft crack stage and won’t give you a hard candy. Hard crack is more like 310°.
Thanks, Alan, for bringing that to my attention. My candy thermometer says hard crack stage is 295. My fingers (or my brain!) somehow typed it in wrong. I’ve changed the recipe!
I love this kind of candy. I noticed in your recipe that in step 1 you say to put all the ingredients in a saucepan. Then in step 4 you say to add coloring, and step 5 to add flavor oil. Wouldn’t you already have added the coloring and oil in step 1?
This is so fun! We ate hard tack candy as a kid, but I have never made it. Thanks for sharing with SYC.
hugs,
Jann
I love classic candy recipes! Your Hard Tack Candy looks delicious. Love the colour! Thank you for sharing it with us at the Hearth and Soul hop. Pinned and shared!
I’d be so interested to try this! Looks yummy! I’d much rather eat this than the store bought 🙂