Christmas candy canes

 

In 1670, in Cologne, Germany, the choirmaster at Cologne Cathedral, wishing to remedy the noise caused by children in his church during the Living Crèche tradition of Christmas Eve, asked a local candy maker for some "sugar sticks" for them.In order to justify the practice of giving candy to children during worship services, he asked the candy maker to add a crook to the top of each stick, which would help children remember the shepherds who visited the infant Jesus.In addition, he used the white color of the converted sticks to teach children about the Christian belief in the sinless life of Jesus.

That is the history of this Christmas symbol. It is better to know the recipe to make it .Make it carefully to surprise your children.

A cup of water

A cup of  light corn syrup or ,Homemade corn syrup

A little more than half a cup of sugar

A tablespoon of powder sugar

Half a tablespoon of peppermint extract

Half a tablespoon of vanilla extract

Half a tablespoon of red food coloring

1 cup water, preferably filtered

1 cup granulated sugar, brown sugar, or honey

DIRECTIONS

Add water and sugar to a saucepan over medium-high heat. Bring the mixture to a simmer and cook, swirling the pan occasionally, until the sugar has completely dissolved. Cool then store in an airtight container, in the fridge, up to 4 weeks.

The first thing we are going to do is put the sugar, syrup and water in a saucepan and put it over medium heat for about 20 minutes while we are stirring so that it does not stick. Then we remove from the fire.

With the saucepan already warm, we are going to incorporate the mint extract and the vanilla extract and continue stirring. When everything is well integrated we are going to put half of this mixture in an oven-safe container and put the icing sugar on top

 Meanwhile, we are preheating the oven to 170º. We put the tray about 10 minutes so that it hardens a little but is soft.

On the container that we have for the oven we are going to make long strips and on the other hand, with the other half of the mixture that we had made we are going to prepare the red part of the stick.

In the other half of the mixture that we have reserved, we are going to put the red coloring and stir. Now we have to make braids always using one strip from the white batch and another from the red batch.

Finally, we let it dry and we will have our candy canes.

Tips ,

To make the hook part of the cane, just cut the strip with scissors soaked in olive oil

If they harden and you have not done the shape well, put it in the oven for a few minutes making sure it does not melt.

Use to decorate Christmas drinks , cakes or just serve as a dessert.