Grandma Holleman’s Taffy
Grandma Holleman made taffy regularly. I have tried for years to make it like she did, but I think that it takes the dry air of Hollis to really make it right.
The hardest part is pulling the taffy while it's still hot. To make that easier you can put on a thin pair of cotton gloves then cover them with vinyl gloves. Butter the vinyl gloves just like you would your hands.
This recipe is written the way Grandma Holleman would make it. She would test the candy in a cup of water to see if it was at "hard ball" stage. This is made simpler with a candy thermometer. Hard Ball Stage is 250°-266°F.
Yield: 20 pieces of hard candy
large platter, buttered
Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
1 cup white Karo syrup
3/4 cup water
1/4 cup butter
1 tsp cinnamon
Instructions:
Place all ingredients in a pan and boil until they come to the hard ball stage. Test the candy in a cup of cold water. Drop a spoonful into the water and if it hardens the taffy is ready to pull.
Grease a platter with butter and pour taffy into it. When it is cool enough to handle put some butter on your hands, take a handful and start pulling. The taffy will still be very hot, and will make your hands very red, but if you wait too long it will become too hard to pull. Pull your handful out into a long rope then fold the rope together and pull again.
When it becomes very hard to pull place the rope on wax paper and when it is completely cool you should be able to break it into bite sized pieces with the back of a knife.
You can put it into twists of wax paper to keep or give away. (Note here: I don't even keep wax paper anymore, but you can get precut sheets for candy twists in both clear cellophane and in wax paper from Amazon.)