About a year ago I bought a thermometer to make hard candy. And it sat in my kitchen, the past year, not even opened out of the box. This weekend while doing a science experiment with my daughter it came in handy. But it’s been staring at me. And staring. And truthfully I still want to make that hard candy. I just don’t want to do all the candy making drama over the stove that goes to it. So today I went to work to create microwave hard candy.
You can use this method to make flavored hard candy, throat drops, or like I did here, sugary honey drops for tea. Once you know the melt times, you can easily add flavors and colors to mix it up. You can also use this particular recipe to make honey spoons, which would just require sucker sticks or wooden melting spoons at the end rather than molds.
Microwave Hard Candy Honey Drops Recipe
Need
Honey Drops
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1/4th cup light Karo syrup
- 1/4th cup honey (we used an organic fall flavored honey from our farmers market and it was great!)
- powdered sugar (optional)
- food coloring/flavoring (optional)
- heart mold
Regular Hard Candy
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup light Karo syrup
- powdered sugar (optional)
- food coloring/flavoring (optional)
Mix your granulated sugar, Karo and honey in a microwave safe glass bowl. Cover with Cling wrap.
Spray your molds lightly with non-stick spray.
Place glass microwave safe bowl in microwave on high for 3 minutes. Remove (I suggest oven mitts!) and CAREFULLY remove plastic wrap. Steam WILL come out and you WILL burn your hands/fingers/face if you do not take care to peel it off away from you.
Quickly stir the mixture (which will likely have bubbles) and add a new piece of cling wrap plastic. Place back in microwave for 2 minutes.
Set your mold tray on a cookie sheet with cold water underneath.
Remove the melted mixture and pour into oiled molds. I used a little scoop to pour.
Let set (5 -10 minutes) and then pop out of molds. They should slide out with no issues.
Now you can lightly dust with powdered sugar for storage.
TIP: If you are going to make a lot of your candies or honey drops, dust with powdered sugar before storing to prevent sticking together.
How to clean up hard candy in bowl:
So you may be asking yourself… how do I clean this hard candy out of the bowl now?? Its…HARD! After I made these I automatically put the glass bowl into the sink and turned on the water…which instantly hardened the candy and made it impossible to remove. DRR.
No worries if you did the same thing! Just fill your bowl with enough water to cover the bottom of the bowl where the candy is, put on another piece of plastic wrap, and put in microwave for approximately 2 minutes. The honey/sugar will melt right into the water and once you carefully remove from microwave, just pour the melted sugar water in the sink. If all the candy isn’t melted, re-add water and put back in the microwave.
- Honey Drops
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1/4 th cup light Karo syrup
- 1/4 th cup honey we used an organic fall flavored honey from our farmers market and it was great!
- powdered sugar optional
- food coloring/flavoring optional
- Mix your granulated sugar, Karo and honey in a microwave safe glass bowl. Cover with Cling wrap. Spray your molds lightly with non-stick spray.
- Place microwave safe bowl in microwave on high for 3 minutes. Remove (I suggest oven mitts!) and CAREFULLY remove plastic wrap. Steam WILL come out and you WILL burn your hands/fingers/face if you do not take care to peel it off away from you.
- Quickly stir the mixture (which will likely have bubbles) and add a new piece of cling wrap plastic. Place back in microwave for 2 minutes.
- Set your mold tray on a cookie sheet with cold water underneath.
- Remove the melted mixture and pour into oiled molds. I used a little scoop to pour.
- Let set (5 -10 minutes) and then pop out of molds. They should slide out with no issues.
- Now you can lightly dust with powdered sugar for storage.
