Homemade Candy Corn is NOT a new Halloween Tradition

So our way cool friends, the Hart's who happen to live in Hawaii, posted on their blog about making homemade candy corn. As soon as I read the title of their blog post I knew I had to try it. I mean what sounds more fun the week before Halloween than making your own candy corn? Which, by the way, I don't even really like. So I checked out the recipe and it doesn't seem to hard...not many ingredients and the Harts were successful so no reason to think I wouldn't be, right? So wrong...so very wrong. My first clue that I should abort this project should have been when Paul called and said: "Do you really need powdered milk..you know it's $6.00 for this box right?" I replied: "Yes..I need the milk and I am sure that we can find other things to use the milk for." Needless to say Paul was not thrilled.

So Tuesday it was rainy and gross so we decided it would be candy corn making day when the girls got home from school. So we get it going..follow the directions exactly and what I ended up resembled a white brick. Not doughy, no way to add food coloring..just a rock hard lump. Fail!! I looked up the recipe and this time read the comments and it turns out you should really pay attention to how hot the mixture is getting on the stove. Let me just give this disclaimer: I am fairly new to cooking on a gas stove so I forget it's much hotter than an electric stove. Not a worry..I'll just try again. Wrong. As I'm measuring the second batch I run out of powdered sugar. Grrr.

So the powdered milk/missing cup of powdered sugar has been sitting on my counter for 2 days and Paul keeps gently asking me when I'm going to make the candy corn since, you know, he's spent like $50 getting all the ingredients I need. He had brought home more powdered sugar the next day. I had some time on my hands today and figured I'd tackle it. And I did. And I learned it wasn't much fun and I still don't really like candy corn.

The recipe was pretty easy to follow and once I paid attention to the temperature I got the dough to the right consistency. However, I let it cool too long so it was hard to work the color in. When I got to the rolling out stage it was a royal pain. It was hard to get the 3 layers of dough thin & small enough to make normal size candy corn. Needless to say we have what looks like candy corn on steroids over here. The kids didn't really help much but they loved the taste of it and have been inhaling it all night. Every time I turn around Julia has a giant candy corn in her mouth.

The moral of the story? Walmart has candy corn for $.88 a bag - buy it there if you really like candy corn.