How to make old fashioned pulled taffy? (2024)

How do you make old fashioned pull candy?

Pull the taffy until it is light in color and stiff.

Pulling taffy can take 15 to 60 minutes, depending upon the number of people you have pulling and the amount of taffy you are working with.

As it turns out, pulling taffy aerates it, or incorporates many tiny air bubbles throughout the candy. This makes it lighter and chewier. Taffy isn't the only candy out there that gets pulled this way. We saw molten lollipop pulled by a machine at a local lollipop factory.

Regular Taffy. Since salt water taffy gained its moniker following that offhanded comment after the flooding in Atlantic City, there is really no difference between salt water taffy and regular taffy. There was little or no salt added to the candy over 100 years ago or now.

Hard taffy is almost a sure sign of cold weather, rather than staleness, unless it has been sitting in grandma's candy jar for the last two years...but I digress. Melted taffy undoubtedly got a little too warm on its journey to you.

Attach your thermometer and let the mixture continue to boil, undisturbed, until it reaches 260 degrees Fahrenheit. This should take approximately 10-20 minutes. Once the sugar reaches 260 degrees Fahrenheit, immediately remove it from the heat.

Plus A Recipe for Jolly Rancher Flavored Taffy. Here is the final of my Jolly Rancher Posts, sorry to overload you with them this week.

How do you know when taffy is done?

How Shriver's Salt Water Taffy Is Made Using A 200-Year-Old Technique

The addition of cornstarch (called cornflour in British recipes) helps give the taffy a smooth texture. Why do I add corn syrup? Corn syrup acts as an "interfering agent" in this and many other candy recipes.

Pioneer Taffy

Mix sugar, water, salt, corn syrup and glycerin in a heavy saucepan. Bring to a boil, and cook until the temperature reaches 258 degrees. Don't overcook or it will turn hard before you can pull it! Remove from heat and add the butter and vanilla until the butter has melted.

- I've seen people use a pastry knife to get the taffy off the cookie sheet, but you can just use your hands if you let the candy cool long enough. If it sticks to the pan at all, let it sit for five more minutes, if the cookie sheet has even a little bit of butter on it, the taffy won't stick.

To make this easy divinity, begin by adding the sugar, corn syrup, and water to a saucepan. Heat over low heat until the candy thermometer reaches 260°F. When the mixture is close to that 260°F temp, beat the egg whites in the bowl of a stand mixer on high speed until stiff peaks form.

Taffy is a type of candy invented in the United States, made by stretching or pulling a sticky mass of boiled sugar, butter or vegetable oil, flavorings, and colorings, until it becomes aerated (tiny air bubbles produced), resulting in a light, fluffy and chewy candy.

: a social gathering at which taffy is made.

Entrepreneurs Enoch James and Joseph Fralinger are the most famous names in taffy making and both claim to have invented the original recipe in Atlantic City.

Do they use salt water to make salt water taffy?

salt water taffy, a type of taffy (a chewy and soft candy) that originated in Atlantic City, New Jersey, U.S. The recipe for salt water taffy does not actually include salt water from the ocean, though it does usually call for salt and water, as well as sugar, corn syrup, butter, cornstarch, flavoring, and coloring.

Use that word and everyone knows exactly what you're talking about.) In Canada and the USA, taffy is most often called either taffy or fruit chews. In most of the UK and Ireland, it's never taffy — only chews or fruit chews. In Australia and New Zealand, toffee seems to be the frontrunner.

So where did salt water taffy get it's name? There's a legend that in 1888, a man named David Bradley had a candy shop which got flooded during a storm. As a result his soft taffy got soaked in ocean salt water. A young girl came in his shop asking for taffy and he joked about only having salt water taffy.

Salt water taffy is a super chewy candy that originated on the New Jersey shore. Commercially, it is made by stretching sticky boiled sugar, butter or vegetable oil, flavorings, and sometimes colorings until it gets lots of air in it so it's light and chewy.

Homemade salt water taffy is best when eaten within 7 days, but you can freeze your taffy for up to 6 months or keep it in the fridge to keep it fresh for two weeks. If frozen, just let the taffy come to room temperature for a couple hours and enjoy.

If our taffy feels hard, it is most likely because it is cold; try holding the taffy snugly in the palm of your hand for a few moments, the warmth should soften it right up!

Taffy can be cooked slightly less to hard-ball stage (260 F), if desired. Candy cooked to soft-crack will be brittle and hard, while candy cooked to hard-ball will be slightly softer and stickier.

In general, the shelf-life for salt water taffy is one week if it's kept at room temperature. It can last two to three weeks in the fridge, and you should be able to keep homemade taffy from spoiling for one month as long as the container has a tight seal and no air gets inside.

Most recipes recommend you butter or grease your hands when you pull your taffy, but all you really need to do is wait until it is cooler. Once your salt water taffy is a nice warm temperature, it won't stick to your hands at all. You need to stretch and pull the taffy swiftly for about 10 minutes.

How do you make taffy without corn syrup?

A note: If you wanted to try to substitute corn syrup in the taffy, you could try sugar dissolved in hot water, or maybe honey or molasses in place of corn syrup.

Use scissors to cut the taffy into squares. Butter the scissors to make the cutting easier. Wrap the cut taffy in waxed paper. Wrapping each piece of taffy in a piece of waxed paper will help it hold its shape.

Low and behold, he had made a homemade taffy puller that was powered by a KitchenAid mixer! It was awesome! We whipped up a batch of taffy right then to see how it worked. It had a few kinks, but we were able to work most of them out over the years.

If taffy is too sticky to handle dust hands with powdered sugar or rub butter on hands and work slowly until cool enough to handle. If taffy becomes too hard it can be held over heat to soften.

Aside from the temperature of the sugar, you can also make chewy candies by adding either pectin or gelatin, like for gummy worms, marshmallows or other fruit chews. The temperature is still important, but the pectin or gelatin adds body and mouthfeel.

How do you harden Salt Water Taffy?

It's not hard to freeze dry taffy. All you need to do is cut each piece in half or in quarters. Then, space the pieces out on your tray. Keep in mind that salt water taffy more than triples in size in your freeze dryer.