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 was making this with my friend and it started out fine and then we started pulling and it just fell apart! We pulled for about 4 min then it was already hard and it didn’t stick together. I would love to make it again but i would first like to know what i did wrong. We think that we had to much butter on our hands when we started pulling but that doesn’t explain why it got hard so fast. Please tell me what i did wrong. And also i dropped a piece on the counter and it shattered.
mine didn’t work at all! tisk tisk!!
looks like a lot of fun fun
I’m a high school foods teacher and i thought this recipe would be perfect for class in our candy unit! epic FAIL. I ended up sending kids outside to lick their sticky hands because it was a mess! I went home and did the recipe TO A TEE and it still didn’t work! I promise I’m not a bad teacher! Our candy thermometers are new! Anyone have any advice?
Well my boys and I just attempted our first go at taffy making. I followed the recipe exactly and yet the end result was a sad,sticky mess !!! Needless to say we had some very disappointed kids( although the pulling part was fun). It just wouldn’t harden enough to do anything. Not sure what went wrong or if the high humidity would have affected anything? Oh well, next attempt we’ll try with grandma who had lots of experience!!
At first I was ready to leave a really bad comment because the recipe was like water and it was just not thickening. But as time went by- lots of time- the boiling syrup thickened and started to look much like toffee my dad used to make for us. I used sweeto syrup concentrate for the colouring and I didn’t even need a candy thermometer as the stage in water makes threads that are pliable, that’s when its perfect and it looks and tastes great, my 3 year old and I are about to start stretch it. Wish me luck!!!
We’re going to do this for one of the “art” projects for my daughter’s “arts and crafts” birthday party today, but are going to cook it in the microwave. Hadn’t thought about using kool-aide before! Should be fun!
Does it turn out hard or soft like saltwater taffy because I tried another recipy and it was terrible after a day?
This looks awesome! Can’t wait to try it. I even have all the ingredients in my cupboard already.
FAILED!!!! majorly failed. its a sticky mess. it didnt harden or anything! not nearly enough to cut it. D:
Also, we used pizza cutters instead of scissors and that worked out great. The first time I made it I let my thermometer sit on the bottom of the pan (never used one before) and ours was a sticky mess too. But, when I learned to not set it on the bottom, the temperature was actually right and it turned out great.
Cherry and Fruit punch turned out great! Grape flavor was very bitter. I don’t know if I did something wrong, (other than cooked it a little hot and got hard candy). Otherwise, easy to make and lots of fun.
This is such a great idea and I think I will try it soon ♥
We only let it sit long enough in the jelly roll pan to cool just enough so we could touch it. It does take some time for it to get to 250 — but not forever, so I am wondering if you have a bad thermometer. It actually happens that they go bad. I hope this help! Please let me know!
HELP!
This has not been turning out for me and my girls. I don’t know what I am doing wrong. HOW LONG does it sit in jelly roll pan? We have a sticky stringy awful mess! It boils and bubbles, we don’t stir it and it takes forever to get to 250 degrees. How long do I leave it at 250 degress?
1st time taffy maker that does not want to admit defeat.
Any helpful hints will be appreciated.