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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So I’m in Australia, and I’m finding it hard to locate the equivalent of Cool-Aid where I am. We used to have Tang and all the cordial powders I can find at line and orange – blergh. Can you recommend any alternative flavouring ingredient?
Much thanks in advance 🙂
I made cherry taffy with this recipe today, and it turned out great! I see people badmouthing the recipe. It’s a great recipe, so ignore the failed attempts. 😉
A few points that will help a lot of people out temperature works well with a few exceptions elevation is the biggest one most recipe’s out there call for 265 at sea level and can go as low as 250 the higher up you go the best way is to test your thermometer in purified boiling water and see how much lower than 212 it does at your place and adjust the temperature accordingly. The second big thing that will affect the temperature is humidity if it is really high you will need to cook it a bit hotter to get it to set up.
Finally there is no such thing as ruined candy if it’s too soft or to hard just cook it again put 1/4 cup water in a clean kettle and bring to boil add back in your entire batch bring back to boil and either cook to a higher temperature if it was too soft or cook to a lower temperature if it was too hard let cool and re-pull
Me and my 10 year old son tried this tonight. We followed directions to a “T” this was a ***SUPER FAIL***. Four hours later… half the “taffy” is all over my kitchen, our clothes, our skin, and the other half we actually got rolled into was paper. The clean up is HORRIBLE! The “taffy” never got to the point of not sticking to EVERYTHING and I used a TON of butter. I still don’t think it is going to set into taffy. DO NOT TRY!!!! It is NOT at all fun or easy as these pictures make it out to be.
What a great idea!
I live in London and I’m not sure if we have Taffy over here. I keep hearing about it on films and TV and have wondered what it’s like. This recipe looks so simple, I have all the tools and ingredients except for a sugar thermometer. This maybe a good reason to get one. Diane @Mrs U Makes
Longtime candy maker here, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is letting your thermometer sit in the pan. The temperature reading will be off as the tip is touching the hottest part while cooking. You need to stir the thermometer through the mixture often, and quite often at the end to get an accurate measurement. Hope this helps!
I don’t have any drink mix and I don’t like using flavoring extract. Can I use fruit punch instead of the water? Plus, I don’t want to bother asking my parents to drive me to the store just to buy some packets of kook-Aid. Thanks for the recipe, love your blog BTW!
Although my lame stove had a hard time heating to 250 😛 this recipe worked great! I used corn starch to keep it from sticking to the waxed paper. I also used cherry flavor and red food coloring instead of the mix and it worked well! Good recipe!
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Oh my god this so did not work for me. I got it to the right temperature easily enough – didn’t take any longer or any less time than I expected, and as you said, it sped up towards the end.
However, it just wouldn’t set. Even remotely. It just stayed liquid with a VERY thin skin over the top. I left it for an hour, and my kitchen was neither hot nor cold – quite ordinary. I followed the recipe EXACTLY and my candy themometer has never given me any trouble before. Any suggestions?
Wow! Just made this with tropical punch flavor!! Turned out so good!! I am sure my two little ones are going to beg me to make more this weekend!!! I actually used an electronic meat thermometer and still had no problems! Thanks for the awesome recipe!! Oh and thanks to the person that recommended the pizza cutter!!! Enjoy!
I look forward to this DIY Taffy, I also enjoy all of your wonderful craft ideas!
:L)