Homemade Licorice Recipe - Take One

We were back in the kitchen, experimenting with more candy recipes. Our candy of choice for today was red licorice (I know, it's not very seasonally appropriate, but candy canes looked really difficult!). Just as with the tootsie rolls, gummy candy, and gumdrops, we found a number of recipes, ranging from kid friendly, and pretty simple, to candy thermometer difficult.

Usually, we start with the easiest recipe, and work our way up to the most complicated. But, this time, we decided to mix things up a little, and try to come up with our own recipe, by mixing what we thought were the best off all the ingredients together. Using the ingredient list from the back of a package of store bought licorice, we sorted through the recipes, and finally came up with this:

Homemade Red Licorice

• 1/2 cup sugar
  
• 1 and 1/2 cups light corn syrup
  
• 3 tablespoons cherry extract (half cherry, and half raspberry would be better, but we only had cherry on hand)
  
• 1 packaged unflavored gelatin
  
• 5 or 6 drops of red food coloring
  
• 1 cup all purpose flour
  
• 1/2 cup corn starch
  
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
  
• a pinch of salt
  

Mix the flour, cornstarch, oil and salt together in a medium sized mixing bowl, and set aside.

In a medium sized sauce pan, combine the sugar and corn syrup. Bring them to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly, until you reach the soft ball stage (240 degrees Fahrenheit) - I'm not sure we actually reached 240 degrees, because I put my candy thermometer through the dishwasher, and am a little suspicious of its readings.

Remove the sugar from the heat, and stir in the gelatin, until dissolved, and the food coloring, and then the flavoring.

Finally, stir in the flour mixture, and mix until smooth.

The mixture is quite sticky, and soft, but can be rolled out into ropes on wax paper, with the help of powdered sugar.

We twisted the ropes, and cut them into bite sized pieces.

Since, we just made these this morning, I'm not sure how they will be once they harden a bit more, but their initial texture is more like salt water taffy, than licorice. But hey, no-pull salt water taffy is pretty cool too.

It's great to be a homeschooler.