New Jersey · Dessert
Salt Water Taffy
- Advanced
- 2 h
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a floral thread lifting the aroma.
Ingredients
- 400g sugar
- 250ml corn syrup
- 250ml water
- 1 tbsp cornstarch
- 55g butter
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp vanilla or other flavoring
- Food coloring (optional)
Equipment
Thermometer · Sheet pan
The skills inside
Sugar stages & caramelShaping by hand
Allergen screen
Found: dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Butter a marble slab or sheet pan generously.
- Combine sugar, syrup, water, cornstarch, butter, and salt and cook to 121C on a candy thermometer.
- Off the heat stir in flavoring and color, then pour onto the slab and let it cool until you can handle it.
- Pull the taffy with buttered hands, stretching and folding, for 15-20 min until it turns pale, opaque, and satiny. 20 min
- Roll into ropes, cut with scissors, and wrap each piece in wax paper immediately.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Sugar stages & caramel 53 recipes
- Nothing is stirred once it is boiling, and any crystals clinging to the side of the pan are brushed down rather than left to fall in.
- Judged by temperature or by a tested stage rather than by time: consecutive stages are a few degrees apart and look identical in the pan.
- Colour is read off the heat and in good light, remembering that sugar keeps darkening after the flame is out.
- Stopped decisively at the point wanted: off the heat and into the next liquid or onto a cold surface, rather than left to coast in a hot pan.
- The result is clear and smooth rather than grainy, cloudy, or seized into a solid mass.
Where it goes wrong It was stirred after coming to the boil, or a stray crystal from the side of the pan fell back in. One crystal seeds the whole pan and the syrup turns grainy within seconds, and once sugar has crystallised the only cure is more water and starting the whole thing again.
Shaping by hand 85 recipes
- The pieces match: weighed, or judged against each other rather than by dividing the mass by eye, so that no piece is half again the size of its neighbour.
- Surfaces are smooth and unbroken with no cracks, tears, or dry patches, and the seams are sealed and sitting underneath.
- The shape is defined and it holds while the tray waits: it has not slumped, spread, or relaxed back out of its form.
- Nothing is trapped that should not be: no air pocket where filling should be, no filling breaking through the surface, and no excess flour greying the outside.
- They finish together in the heat: no piece done while another is still raw, which is the only test that the first mark was met.
Where it goes wrong The dough was worked past its point or shaped without a rest, so it fought back: the pieces spring out of shape on the tray and bake tight, uneven, and torn along the surface.
At the Table
- The Pour
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- Belgian tripel
- Zero-Proof
- Jasmine tea
The sweetness rule is absolute: the pour must be sweeter than the plate, and acid keeps it from cloying.
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