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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Hi Jessica, I will admit candy making can be tricky since it has to cook to a very precise temperature. I have found when I have failure it is usually due to a bad candy thermometer. They seem to not last too long.
It never works.
In my comment above I meant 250 degrees F
This is the best taffy recipe I have ever tried. Mine turned out just like store bought taffy. People having trouble with consistency need to rely more on the hard ball method (have a bowl of cold water and drip the cooking taffy into it. If the taffy has a crusty hardish texture -it’s ready) the first time until they get a feel for their temperature gauge. My gauge is fairly new and mine was ready right at 150. It was a sticky, gooey mess, but that is how it’s supposed to be at first. Let it cool and then pull (for a VERY long time). The longer I pulled the better it got, and yes I used lots of butter. I put a timer on for 20 minutes for pulling. At 15 minutes it seemed ready and the additional 5 minutes at the end made it so the taffy didn’t stick to the teeth as much. This recipe is going in the recipe box!
i have not tried it yet but i bought Tropical punch kool-aid and cherry i am going to use Tropical punch…. it looks YUMMY!
I tried this recipe today and make a couple changes after researching some other recipes. I really wanted a sour taste to it and achieved a moderate sour flavor by adding citric acid and omitted the vanilla. I let it heat to 250 degrees then added the Tropical punch kool-aid after removing from heat. I also added 1 TBSP of citric acid at this point. I put the mixture in a buttered dish to cool in the freezer for about 5 minutes or so. I buttered my hands to pull and it seemed to pull on it’s own weight. It wasn’t hard or soupy…just right, although I did have to keep adding butter to my hands or else it would want to stick. The end result was a flavor like starbursts and warheads and my kids loved it. They were chewy and tasted great. First time taffy maker and very pleased…thank you for the recipe. 🙂
My husband found this recipe awhile back, and we tried it tonight. I think we didnt cook it long enough, and we didnt have a proper thermometer. Almost there though. Still tasty, just we have to eat it with a spoon! Going to try again though!
I made three batches the other day and they turned out great! I figured I would make prob 6 batches total and hand little baggies out with christmas gifts. Although one batch, the cherry, I made the same as the rest but it sticks to the wrapper. I started just storing them in the frige and it worked better. Great recipe! Reminds me of the salt water taffy from amusement parks! The only problem I really ran into was after I pulled in and went to roll it out/cut it, the taffy kept sticking to the wax paper. I ended up just buttering the was paper slightly as well.
“we probably used over 1/2 of stick of butter”
Forgot the “a” between of and stick!
Very Good! Put crushed blac
k walnuts. Cooked it to 160 and it worked great!
Several other website recipes show cooking it to two hundred EIGHTY. It would be helpful to have an approx time of how long to get it to the required temp.
Here is the problem that the people with a sticky mess are having. They are not getting it hot enough. I have done some research and a lot of other sites recommend cooking theirs to between 160 and 170 depending on how hard or soft you want it. 150 is NOT hot enough according to what I have read. The person making this recipe is either happy with a sticky mess (a good tasting mess howbeit) or their thermometer is a little off. On a good note, this is a very tasty recipe, and other than the cooking temperature is a great.
http://candy.about.com/od/candybasics/ss/pullcandy_2.htm
http://www.mtnlaurel.com/recipes/765-molasses-recipes-and-old-fashion-taffy-pull-parties.html
we tried this and it was a bit sticky and stingy at first but then after re-washing hands we (accidentally) discovered that if we left a bit of water on our hands it helped to get the taffy to the right consistency then after working with it, it was great. We ended up re-buttering and it seems great now. We are almost ready to cut it up. It may have something to do with elevation or humidity.
For people who said it was a liquid soupy mess, you probably did not cook it long enough for it to reach the temperature at which it will thicken as it cools.
For people who’s taffy was too hard, you must have cooked it too much and it’s temperature raised too high
I don’t have a candy thermometor so i used the cold water method. when you’ve boiled it for a bit and you find that the texture changed to a bit thicker you just put a drop of the mixture into the cold water and if its a moderately hard ball that will keep its shape when touched it’s ready. you just transfer the mixture to your greased pan and let it sit there until you can touch it. then you pull at it for about 20 minutes until it thickens and has a satiny gloss.
hope this helps!
Fun and easy! We made mystery flavors with clear koolaid. I must say it did stick to wax paper. Plan on spraying with Pam on some and rolling bits in corn starch some in powdered sugar to see which works best.