Homemade Taffy is easy to make and gets the kids involved. Welcome to our Sweet Shoppe! If you are alarmed by red dye, excessive amounts of sugar and underage workers turn away now!
If not, stick around and see how we made loads of homemade taffy!
Related: What kid would not want to make this? How To Make Gummy Candy
Kids love to be involved! They will have a great experience with this hands-on recipe.
Homemade Taffy Ingredients
2 1/2 cups white sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1 cup light corn syrup
1 1/3 cups water
2 tablespoons butter (plus lots extra to butter hands, we probably used over 1/2 of a stick of butter on our hands)
1 teaspoon salt
1 – .21oz (6g) package of unsweetened, fruit-flavored drink mix (like Kool-Aid) (we used cherry)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Steps for making the Homemade Taffy
- Butter a large jelly roll pan or a cookie sheet with sides really well.
- In a medium saucepan, stir together the sugar and cornstarch.
- Add corn syrup, water, butter, and salt and stir well until butter is melted.
- Bring to a boil over medium heat and stop stirring. Cook the mixture until the candy thermometer read 250 degrees F (120 degrees C). This takes some time to get it to 250 degrees. Once the temperature approaches 250 degrees, watch very closely because it cooks quickly at the end.
- Immediately remove from heat.
- Carefully stir in vanilla and drink mix.
- Stir well. We should have stirred ours more– notice some bits of drink mix (dark spots) on our taffy.
- Pour mixture onto a buttered baking pan.
- Allow it to cool enough to handle, about 15 minutes.
Directions For Pulling The Taffy
- Once the taffy has cooled enough to handle, butter hands and begin pulling. (It starts kind of translucent)
- Then pull…and pull…butter hands again…pull…
- and stretch…pull…more hand buttering…pull…
- It will become more opaque and lighten in color depending on the attention span of your workers!
- This takes about 10-15 minutes of pulling.
- Pull into long ropes and cut with buttered scissors.
- and cut!
- Wrap pieces of taffy in pieces of waxed paper
- and give it a good twist on each end.
- Finished!
Sweet!!
Homemade Taffy Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 cups white sugar
- 3 tablespoons cornstarch
- 1 cup light corn syrup
- 1 1/3 cups water
- 2 tablespoons butter plus lots extra to butter hands, we probably used over 1/2 of a stick of butter on our hands
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 package unsweetened, fruit-flavored drink mix (like Kool-Aid) (We used Cherry)
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Instructions
- Butter a large jelly roll pan or a cookie sheet with sides really well.
- In a medium saucepan, stir together the sugar and cornstarch.
- Add corn syrup, water, butter, and salt and stir well until butter is melted.
- Bring to a boil over medium heat and stop stirring. Cook the mixture until the candy thermometer read 250 degrees F (120 degrees C). This takes some time to get it to 250 degrees. Once the temperature approaches 250 degrees, watch very closely because it cooks quickly at the end.
- Immediately remove from heat.
- Carefully stir in vanilla and drink mix.
- Stir well. We should have stirred ours more– notice some bits of drink mix (dark spots) on our taffy.
- Pour mixture onto a buttered baking pan.
- Allow it to cool enough to handle, about 15 minutes.
- Once the taffy has cooled enough to handle, butter hands, and begin pulling. (It starts kind of translucent)
- Then pull…and pull…butter hands again…pull… and stretch…pull…more hand buttering…pull…
- It will become opaquer and lighten in color.
- This takes about 10-15 minutes of pulling.
- Pull into long ropes and cut with buttered scissors.
- Wrap pieces of taffy in pieces of waxed paper and give it a good twist on each end.
Nutrition
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Are you laughing as you make your taffy?
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I had a babysitter as a child that used to make this with us. Memories! I look forward to doing this with my kids this holiday season. Using Kool Aid is brills!
is the taffy hard? or is it like salt water taffy soft?
there’s no way i could let my son near those kind of scissors yet , it doesn’t seem like they cut straight anyways.
We made the taffy tonight. Turned out great. Thanks for the great idea!
how long can this be stored? and if it sits for too long will the wax paper be hard to pull off? I only have the clear kool-aid, think it’d be okay to add food coloring? I’m thinking I’d add it when I add the vanilla and drink mix… any thoughts?
What a fun project to do with children. I will have to have my grandchildren over this summer and give this a try. Thanks for sharing.
About how many do you think this made?
I just finished making this with my family. We all love it! Thanks so much for the recipe, I know we’ll be making this a lot more!
Great recipe! I just finished making a patch of grape taffy,
couldn’t stop eatting while I was packing the cake =)
Thanks for sharing, look forward for more fun recipes!
I have a couple of taffy recipes tucked away that I’ve not tried out of fear of pulling by myself! This makes it look like I could totally do it, though. :>) I linked on my weekly roundup (post is under my name) – thanks for the tiny shot of confidence!!
So much fun! i can’t wait to try this with my daughter!
This looks like a blast!! And such cute pictures. I can’t wait to try it – thanks for sharing! 🙂
I just came over from ‘CRAFT’. I just love your demo models…how happy they look! We just came back from the dentist with a clean bill of health, so I think I am going to have to stash this recipe for our next nasty-weather day! Hold off on the sugar just a bit more? 🙂
That look slike fun. I may have to try this
This is awesome! Just stumbled it for you!!