This homemade candy corn recipe from Alton Brown is super easy to make, and you will never want to buy store bought candy corn again!
Usually candy making is very intimidating for me. Dealing with thermometers and boiling sugar is not my cup of tea. I’d rather just mix something in a stand mixer and bake that in the oven. Now, I’m thinking I might go into my own candy corn making business. It was really fun to roll the sugar mess into ropes and make the ropes look yellow and orange. You have to work fast while making these and the sugar has to be somewhat warm. Once it starts cooling down, it’s even harder to work with. Oh yah, and they taste even better than store bought candy corn. Alton used a butter cutter to make his candy corn shapes, I just used a knife and cut them into little triangle pieces.
Alton got his ropes to look perfect, as you can see in my pictures the some of the candy corns look out of shape. Sorry about the following photos. They were taken with my camera phone. 
Roll out the white sugar so that it’s the length of your baking sheet.
Color the sugar with orange and yellow.
As you can see, some of my ropes didn’t turn out very even. By this time they were getting hard to work with. You have to work fairly quickly with
candy corn.
- 4½ ounces powdered sugar, approximately 1¼ cups
- ½ -ounce nonfat dry milk, approximately 6½ teaspoons
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
- 3½ ounces granulated sugar, approximately ½ cup
- 3¾ ounces light corn syrup, approximately ⅓ cup
- 2½ tablespoons water
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 to 3 drops yellow and orange gel paste food coloring
- Combine the powdered sugar, dry milk and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse 4 to 5 times until the mixture is smooth and well combined. Set aside.
- Combine the sugar, corn syrup and water in a 2-quart pot. Put over medium heat, cover and cook for 4 minutes. Add the butter, clip on a candy thermometer, and bring the mixture to 230 degrees F, about 1 to 2 minutes. When the sugar syrup reaches 230 degrees F, take the pot off the heat and remove the thermometer. Add the vanilla and the dry mixture, stirring continuously with a silicone spatula until well combined. Pour onto a half sheet pan lined with a silicone baking mat. Cool until the mixture is cool enough to handle, about 10 to 15 minutes.
- Divide the dough into 3 equal pieces. Add 2 drops of yellow food coloring to 1 piece and knead the dough until the color is consistent throughout. Add 2 drops of orange to the second piece, and knead until the color is consistent throughout. Leave the third piece white. Roll each piece of dough into a strand, about 18-inches long. Cut each strand in half.
- Roll 1 of the white pieces into a strand that is about ½-inch thick and about 22-inches long. Repeat with a yellow piece and orange piece. Lay the strands side by side and press them together using your fingers. Cut the strand into 4-inch pieces. Lay the strands, 1 at a time, onto the silicone mat and press into a wedge shape, like a triangle. Use a wire butter slicer to cut the candies into pieces. If you don't have a wire butter slicer, use a knife, metal bench scraper or pizza cutter to slice the dough into small pieces. Repeat the procedure with remaining dough. Lay the finished pieces on a piece of parchment or waxed paper to dry for 1 hour. Store in an airtight container with parchment paper between each layer.
- Read more at: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/candy-corn-recipe.html?oc=linkback
