honey candy makers (need help)

[beekeeper120]

So I attempted to make some hard honey candy and ran into a few problems. I used a recipe of 2 1/2 cups of honey and 1/4 c butter. I heated the honey on med heat and all went well until I got to the hard ball stage. From hard ball to hard crack it kept getting burnt. I tried putting a 1/2 cup water at the start but ran into the same problem. What am I doing wrong, I even tried lowering the temp down one number on my stove.
(thank goodness I had extra honey laying around hehe)

Few other things I did...I have a candy therometer and watched /kept close eye on it, I reduced the heat a little to little avail. should I just skip the butter and just use honey?

Any help you all can give me would be greatful..

[Bee Bliss]

Sorry, I can't help you. Was watching this thread for answers, but no one replied. I tried making fudge with honey last year and did not like it at all. It didn't set up right and also had a little burnt taste to it. Used a thermometer, too. The burned flavor and the lack of setting up just did not make sense. I specifically used a recipe that called for honey in it.

[DeeAnna]

Welllllll, hmmm, I'd say cooking butter to 300 degrees F sounds like your problem. You are burning the milk solids. The hard candy recipes I'm familiar with do not have butter in them. I would expect a recipe that does contain butter would add it near the very end of cooking or added after the product is removed from heat.

Also note the following recipe has sugar in it. The type of sugars in the recipe will affect crystallization, and I'm not certain a recipe made only with honey can produce a hard candy like cane/beet sugar can.

Homemade Honey Pops
Recipe from the National Honey Board
Makes 18-20 pops

* 1 cup sugar
* 1/2 cup honey
* 1/4 cup water
* 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

In a heavy pan, combine sugar, honey, and water. Over high heat, bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Reduce heat to medium-high and continue to boil until honey mixture reaches 300°F (hard-crack stage), about 5 to 6 minutes, stirring frequently. Add cinnamon and mix well. Pour into prepared lollipop molds (greased with lollipop sticks inserted), following manufacturer’s directions; cool completely. Remove from molds and wrap in plastic wrap. Store in a cool, dry place.

[Andreu]

Thanks DeeAnna for another great post. You have shared a good method to make candy from honey. I will keep this information in my mind.Good work and keep it up.

[mgolden]

Stainless steel sauce pans are tricky to use when making candy. Even with thick bottoms, candy thermometers, and constant stirring, one can easily burn the candy.

We have two old 4 liter pressure canning saucepans that are thick aluminum. They work very well to make candy with.

300F is an upper end high temp and we only use 300F to make a hard rock candy.

Fudge = 230F

Toffee(moderately soft) = 242F

Candy temp for your location depends on altitude and actual thermometer(they very slightly).