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Candy Cane Recipe

Old Fashioned Recipe For Peppermint Candy Canes You Can Make Yourself

An old fashioned candy cane recipe to make homemade candy canes. Making candy canes at home in your kitchen is fun, and you can even get the kids involved.

Just be sure there's an adult present always to supervise the little ones around the boiling sugar syrup as it gets very hot.

Bright red and white candy canes are part of the Christmas festivities for children of all ages. Whether eaten or wrapped in clear plastic and used as decorations, candy canes are fun and evoke happy memories of Christmas's past.

History Of The Candy Cane

It is generally believed that in 1670, the kindly old choirmaster at Germany’s Cologne Cathedral had someone bend boiled sugar sticks into the form of shepherds' crooks, which he gave to his younger choristers to keep them silent during the long Christmas Eve service.

It wouldn't be until the end of the nineteenth century, however, that the familiar red-and-white-striped "candy cane" appeared: the white representing Christ's sinless life and the red stripes representing the Blood of Christ and His sacrificial death on the cross for all humanity -- "by whose stripes ye were healed." (I Peter 2:24) When turned upside down, the cane shape appears as the letter "J" for Jesus.

It is claimed that the original candy canes were flavoured with peppermint since that flavour is very similar to the flavour of hyssop, a recognized Biblical symbol of sacrifice.

Interestingly, candy canes were all tediously handmade until the 1950s, when Father Gregory Keller, a Roman Catholic priest, invented a machine to fully automate their production. Now, about two billion are prepared and sold annually worldwide.

Peppermint Candy Cane Recipe

This old-fashioned peppermint Christmas candy recipe is taken from "The White House Cook Book" by Hugo Ziemann, Steward of the White House, and Mrs. F. L. Gillette, a celebrated 19th-century cookbook author, published by The Saalfield Publishing Company, New York, in 1913.

A stick candy recipe suitable for making candy canes.

One pound of granulated sugar, one cupful of water, a quarter of a cupful of vinegar or half a teaspoonful of cream of tartar, one small tablespoonful of glycerine. Flavour with vanilla, rose, lemon, or peppermint.

Boil all except the flavouring, without stirring, twenty minutes or half an hour, or until crisp when dropped in water. Just before pouring upon greased platters to cool, add half a teaspoonful of baking soda.

After pouring upon platters to cool, pour two teaspoonfuls of flavouring over the top. When partly cool, pull it until very white. Draw it into sticks the size you wish, and cut off with shears into short sticks or kiss-shaped drops.

The candy may be colored if desired, and the sticks shaped to make homemade candy canes for Christmas. Two thin sticks, one colored red and one left white, when twisted together and rolled will make a striped candy cane.

Have fun trying this old time candy cane recipe. Make stick candy treats and edible candy cane decorations for the holidays.

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