One of the biggest problems with holiday foods is avoiding the high fructose corn syrup in products and the corn syrup in your Christmas baking. Even when you decide to make compromise foods, many of them call for corn syrup. That cuts whole classes of recipes out.
After talking with some online friends, I found that some use agave successfully for replacing corn syrup in some dishes, but I couldn’t find where anyone said it had worked well on candies. So I started googling and I found several recipes online to make a corn syrup replacement. This recipe worked the best for us, and is now my go-to so I can make pecan pie and caramels and nougats for Christmas parties.
From the Christmas Menu Mailer
1 cup sugar
¾ cup water
¼ tsp cream of tartar
Pinch salt
Combine everything in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cover. Cook for 3 minutes (this washes down any remaining sugar crystals on the sides of the pan back into the solution so it won’t crystalize later). Uncover and cook to softball stage. Pour into a clean, hot mason jar and cool completely. Will store for a long time in the fridge.
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Thanks so much for sharing this recipe! I looked and looked for something similar when I came across an awesome sounding recipe for pumpkin fudge. However, all my searching brought up nothing. Not even close. I had completely given up on the recipe. I was also very interested to read about the reason for covering the saucepan for 3 minutes. I blogged about a fudge recipe once that had similar instructions and never knew why that was in the directions. (Even more mysterious, because the recipe for fudge only called for having the lid on for 1 minute) So thanks for that tidbit!
~Karen
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What type of sugar would you use for this?
Sucanot? Coconut? or what ?
Personally, I use white sugar for this since it’s a once-a-year treat, but I know others have used rapadura or sucanat successfully.