Candy-Making Basics: Quick Save for Cooked Sugar

"Candy"-making can get pretty "crazy"-making sometimes. The sugar boils faster than you thought, you forgot to measure out the cream, you can't find the recipe under the chaos on your counter - it happens. Luckily, there's a way to slow things down if they get out of hand...

There's a magic number in the candy-making business: 293°. Remember it and love it!

Until you hit this temperature on your candy thermometer, you can just add water to the cooking sugar to bring the temperature down and re-cook your sugar to whatever stage you needed. A fourth of a cup of room-temperature water should do the trick.

That's right: Don't panic; just add water. A fourth of a cup of room-temperature water should do the trick.

After this temperature, the molecular structure of the sugar has broken down too much to recover. But if you're too late, just throw some nuts in the pot and call them pralines.

We hope you don't find yourself in need of this little trick, but it's a good one to know about if you do!

Any adventurous candy-making going on in your kitchen?

(Image: Flickr member cwinters licensed under Creative Commons)

Comments (5)

wow. i so could have used this tip 3 days ago. i'm filing it away now for further use...thanks!

posted by em on December 18th 2008 at 12:35pm
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Sugar doesn't start to color until around 300F/145C, so if your sugar is too dark it's gone, there's no starting over. For caramel or anything where the sugar will start to color before the item is done, this is not a useful tip.

However, if you're making an Italian meringue (as for marshmallows or nougat) where the sugar syrup stays clear, and you stepped away to answer the the phone or something (not that you would) and the sugar went just a tad too high, then this will save you.

posted by ThatBrazenTart on December 18th 2008 at 12:47pm
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I tried making salt caramels last night (from the recipe on this site), and, despite my frequent testing (dropping a bit into cool water) and keeping an eye on the thermometer, I managed to overcook it into hard toffee. Not the worst outcome, but I was looking forward to chewy caramel! Oh well. I'll give it another try soon.

posted by JessicaB on December 18th 2008 at 1:23pm
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I was just wondering what those types of non-caramel recipes were that this is useful for.

JessicaB the same exact thing happened to me with the same recipe last night too. I'm going to bake it into some cookies I think.

posted by crepesuzette on December 18th 2008 at 5:46pm
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Crepesuzette:
Marshmallows require a sugar syrup cooked to 125C/260F. The syrup for nougat is cooked to 150C/300F. Italian meringue for macarons is cooked to 188C. Hard candies are cooked to 140C/284F. Sugar for pulled sugar decorations is cooked to 150C.

Try a probe-type thermometer with an alarm setting (Buy them at Sur la Table, Willaims-Sonoma, or Bed Bath & Beyond). Set it to go off a few degrees before you need to stop cooking. These thermometers are generally accurate within a degree or two. Setting it to go off a little early will give you a minute to drop whatever else you started to do and get over to the stove.

posted by ThatBrazenTart on December 19th 2008 at 2:02am
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