Taffy........That YOU Made. Oh yes you can!

OK. Don't think me crazy and just read the post. It's super cute and looks relatively easy to do so read on before you throw it out the window! I would try this with my kids only I think, not my preschoolers from school. It would be like a bad sesame street episode. Read on! I think I'll make this for my sister. She adores taffy and she would be oober impressed by the home made factor. These would be great too as a favor at a birthday party.

Skip to My Lou Blog
Welcome to our Sweat Sweet Shoppe! If you are alarmed by red dye, excessive amounts of sugar and under age workers turn away now!

If not, stick around and see how we made loads of homemade taffy!

Here's our recipe

Homemade Taffy

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)
1 teaspoon salt
1 - .21oz (6g) package unsweetened, fruit-flavored drink mix (like Kool-Aid) (we used cherry)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Butter large jelly roll pan or a cookie sheet with sides.
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 mixture until candy thermometer read 250 degrees F (120 degrees C). This takes some time to get it to 250 degrees. Once it 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 buttered baking pan. Allow to cool enough to handle, about 10 minutes.

Directions:

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!!

Too Many Good Things Beginning

Ok, ok, ok. So there are 'too many good things' that I find daily not to share with my sweet friends. So I'm starting this little blog to send great websites, products, crafts, free stuff, and tutorials your way so get ready for the fun to begin.

I tried to figure out the best way to circulate all these wonderful things I find out of the -too many to count- blogs I follow. So if I have ever told you about this great blog I found or this great craft I found now you will be able to find it...we'll you should be able to find it. I can't remember who I told these great discoveries to and who I haven't so violia - Too Many Good Things Blog!

So here's to all the fun things I find and all my WONDERFUL, TALENTED, AMAZING, CLEVER, AND OF COURSE GORGEOUS friends God has given me to share with. Here's the first thing I'm posting and there are much, much more to come!

Candy Bar Covers from Skip to My Lou (one of the best sites out there for oh so cute ideas and pretty inexpensive)

Don't those make you just want to eat whatever is inside. Ok, ok, it helps that it's chocolate but this would be a great little thing to do with kiddos or a class (like my 4 year olds). I think they're just too cute and not too spooky.

These Halloween candy bar covers are such a simple, inexpensive way to make candy bars festive.
For the mummy, stick 2 wiggly eyes at the top of the candy bar, wrap white crepe paper party streamers around the candy bar. Fasten with some tape. Done!

For the bat, print out a template and cut the bat out with black construction paper, add eyes, tape the ends of the candy bar wrapper to the back. Place candy bar inside bat and wrap the wings around the candy bar and fasten with a piece of double stick tape or a glue dot.

Candy Bar Wrapper Bat Template Download

Happy Halloween Tag Download


We're going to use these this week as we study noctornal animals I think and send them home after our super fun fall party in our class! I'll try to remember to post some pictures.
So happy halloweening (yes, that IS a word) and enjoy this as a gift for someone else or yourself. And Long Live Chocolate!