Candy. all good candy recipes call for light corn syrup because it helps inhibit crystallization in the cooling process. English toffee uses quite a bit of corn syrup, well my mom’s recipe does anyway. I also make a sticky gooey caramel popcorn with light corn syrup that’s fantastic. (we don’t do the dried out hard Karmel Korn stuff at our house. If it doesn’t stick to your fingers and teeth it’s not worth eating.)
caramel popcorn:
1 cup butter
1 1/3 c sugar
1/2 c light corn syrup (some times I do 3/4 cup just for kicks. it makes the goo a bit softer)
1/4 t salt
1 cup popcorn kernels that have been popped. I have no idea how much popped popcorn that makes. We use a great big stainless steel bowl to hold it all.
cook over medium heat to boiling, stirring continuously. Boil for four minutes. Remove and pour over popcorn. Stir it all together and then chow down. Or serve nicely depending on your guests. If you like you can stir in 1 1/2-2 cups roasted peanuts.
BTW, I wouldn’t worry too much about using light corn syrup up that quickly. It’s got a shelf life longer than a Twinkie.
Today I decided to make Mahna Mahna’s caramel recipe because I had all of the ingredients I needed except the evaporated milk. While at the store buying my other groceries for the day I bought some milk too.
I made the caramels this afternoon and when I was completely finished and they were cooling in the pan I saw the evaporated milk sitting on the counter.:smack: The caramel tastes good but I doubt it will ever sit up properly. Now I suppose I’ll have to find another use for it. :dubious:
MickNickMaggies I would try your idea next but I’d probably leave out the gelatin.
I use the stuff mainly for “Kick-Off Chicken Nuggets”. The sauce is (in home dinner size, obvioulsy you’d have to scale up):
1/3 cup water
2 teaspoons corn starch
(mix those two first)
1/2 cup corn syrup
1/3 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons soy sauce
(mix those into the water/corn starch mixture)
1/2 cup diced onion, 2 cloves garlic minced, 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper. Sautee these three until soft, then pour in the liquid mixture, then, when it bubbles, add in a pound of breaded/battered (already cooked) chicken nuggets.
Sticky buns? (unless you’re against not just pecan pie but anything involving pecans and baking). Though I guess you’d have to be catering a few breakfasts for this to work.
Well, if it were 50 years ago, you could mix it with evaporated milk and make baby formula! (apparently that’s why my mother had it around the house. I threw it away when I was 30 years old and found it, still in the cabinet… with stuff growing in it).
I wasn’t sure how well that would work or if there would be weird crystallization problems but I might try it since the finished product is too thin to cut into candies and I’d like to try a do-over anyways.
(I will try some of these other ideas in the next couple weeks. I just happened to have nearly everything on hand for caramels.)
Speaking of divine… Divinity is pretty good. It’s a sort of meringue/marshmallowy candy. My mom used to make it for xmas every year, with a maraschino cherry and chopped nuts. Here’s one recipe, but there are tons of others online. You can make it without nuts if you want, too.
