Christmas Lollies

I made these some years ago when my children were on strict exclusion diets due to food allergies. They are simple to make, and have only two ingredients! If you use golden caster sugar, they will be the colour of mine, below. While caster sugar will produce a clearer lolly. You can buy lolly sticks from craft stores such as Hobbycraft, which also sell the little plastic sleeves and ties. Lakeland in town also sell these. They make lovely little Christmas gifts and are quite strait forward to make!

WARNING: this is NOT an activity intended for children, the sugar gets VERY hot.

Ingredients

• 2 cups caster sugar
• 2/3 cup light corn syrup - if you have this your lollies will stay fairly clear. I desperately wanted to source some, but so far no luck. After reading some excellent info here I decided to use Agave nectar instead. It worked fine, but the lollies were toffee coloured instead.

Equipment

• Lolly sticks
• silicone baking sheet
• sugar thermometer
• non stick pan
• bowl of cold water large enough to submerge lower half of the pan.

Tip:- Add flavouring if desired - mint or vanilla, but your lollies will darken unless you have clear flavouring! 

Method

• Heat the sugar and syrup in the pan and using a sugar thermometer heat and stir until it is boiling at 310F
• Remove from the heat. Submerge the lower half of the pan in the cold water bowl for 10-15 seconds, keep swirling/stirring.
• As it thickens up pour the liquid sugar on top of the lolly sticks in 1 inch circles. (If it spreads too much, it's still too hot)
• Quickly add sprinkles etc before the surface cools!

NB lots of sprinkles contain major allergens. I used these which do have egg white and soya lecithin in. We are lucky and these are ok for us, soya protein would not have been.

I honestly don't think I have *ever* been so nervous about a recipe before. I had never made anything like this - but it was surprisingly easy and I will be far more confident next time! Clearing up took a while, perhaps because I knocked over the sprinkles.....

Clearing up Tips

1. DON'T panic!!! You have't ruined your pan etc (unless and liquid sugar gets burned underneath.) as long as you have a large bowl of hot water to submerse the lower half in you an manage this really easily.
2. Once you have poured your lollies, the remaining sugar will be hardening and impossible to remove from the pan. Heat gently until it starts to move again, and literally POUR it into the cold water. It will set immediately, and your pan will have so little left in that the rest will easily dissolve in hot soapy water!