How To Prepare Sugar For Candies

Put a coffeecupful of water for each pound of sugar, into a porcelain kettle, over a slow fire. Put in, for each pound, say half a sheet of isinglass, and half a teaspoon of gum arabic, dissolved together. Skim off all impurities, and flavor to your taste. All sugar for candy is prepared thus, and then boiled till, when drawn into strings and cooled, it snaps like glass. A little hot vinegar must be put to loaf sugar candy, to prevent its being too brittle. Candies made thus, can be colored with boiled beet juice, or saffron, and it can be twisted, rolled, and cut into any form. It can have almonds, cocoanut, hickorynuts, Brazil, or peanuts, sliced, or chopped and put in. It can be flavored with vanilla, rose, lemon, orange, cloves, cinnamon, or anything you please.

Molasses Candy

One cupful of granulated sugar, one cupful of molasses, one-fourth cup of water, piece of butter the size of an egg. Boil hard, stir all the time. Try it by dipping a little in water. When done, let it get cool enough to handle, and pull until it becomes white. If you wish, put in a cupful of hickorynut meats; pour on buttered pans, and let it get cold.

Ice Cream Candy

Put three cupfuls of white sugar in an iron kettle with little less than half a cup of vinegar, or the juice of one large lemon, one and a half cupfuls of water, and butter the size of a hickorynut. Do not stir the ingredients, but put over a hot fire and boil, until dropping in a little water, it will be quite hard; add flavoring just as it is done; pour into buttered plates; pull as soon as it can be handled. If you want taffy, do not boil quite so long. This recipe makes splendid chocolate candy, by merely adding a cupful of grated chocolate when you first put it on to boil. If you do not pull it, you will have chocolate caramels. It is very nice when pulled.

Chocolate Caramels

One cupful molasses, one-half cup of sugar, one-third cup of milk, two and one-half squares of chocolate, butter size of a small egg. Grate the chocolate fine, and boil until stiff; pour into buttered pans to cool; before cold, mark off in little squares.

Chocolate Creams

Inside. - Two cupfuls of sugar, one cupful of water, one and a half tablespoonfuls of arrowroot, one teaspoonful of vanilla.

Outside. - Half a pound of chocolate. Directions: For inside, mix the ingredients, except the vanilla; let them boil from five to eight minutes; stir all the time. After this is taken from the fire, stir until it comes to a cream. When it is nearly smooth, add the vanilla and make the cream into balls. For outside, melt the chocolate, but do not add water to it. Roll the cream balls into the chocolate while it is warm.

Marshmallows

Dissolve half a pound white gum arabic in one pint of water, strain, and add one-half pound of fine sugar, and place over the fire, stirring constantly until the syrup is dissolved and all of the consistency of honey. Add gradually, the whites of four eggs, well beaten. Stir the mixture until it becomes somewhat thin and does not adhere to the finger. Flavor to taste with vanilla, and pour into a tin slightly dusted with powdered starch, and when cool, divide into small squares.