Tried to make candy yesterday...

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turmeric

Megerator
I succeeded for about five seconds but then it burned. Then it stuck to the pan. I had a huge burnt-sugar lollipop in my pan. So I added water and reheated. It came loose and I tried to lift it out, whereupon it turned into taffy and assumed the strangest deep-sea lobster-like shapes, complete with appendages! I looked at the bizarre sculpture and tossed it. I will try again when it's not raining. I understand moisture in the air bodes ill for candymaking.
 
Do you have a candy thermometer?

I know most home cooks do not have a refractometer, but If you do...check your brick level. Sounds like you bricks were too high.
 
Meg it sounds like one of the first times I tried to make cheese sauce. I could actually pick it up and throw it at the wall (which I did). Then there was the angel food cake which rather than rising, fell, so that one could pick it out of the pan like a piece of tire tread. Which I did. I think of writing a cookbook. "Interesting Results" or some such. Maybe I could get your recipe....
 
Sorry for the confusion. The proper term is Brix.

I am in the habit of calling them "bricks" since I was a kid & thought that was what everyone was saying...

the Brix scale is how you measue the sucrose to water ratio in a solution. When making candy it is the most accurate way to ensure that you have a good outcome. Most home candy makers rely on a form of the Balling(sp?) scale.

When making maple products (candy, creme, syrup, etc) we depend on checking the brix to know if we are at the proper point for what we are making.

Or you could just do like my dad. He lifts a spoon out of the pan and watches it drip & then tells us what the sugar content is by reading the colour and shape of the drops!! And he is almost always right to within 1%!!
 
Thanks, guys, it was pretty funny! I just remembered that an arthropod's exoskeleton is made of chitin, which is basically sugar!!!

Kevin, are you suggesting that I'm a few brix shy of a load?
 
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