A Surplus of Candy Corn

I have a surplus of candy corn from my candy jars.

 Despite the fact that it’s the poster-child-candy for Fall & Halloween, easily substituted for Bat Fangs used in potion stirring spoons~  I have to confess~ I am not a fan of the flavor or texture. . .

  { insert gasp here }

. . . blasphemous, I know since October 3oth is National Candy Corn Day.

So I found a few recipes to use my candy corn & make it more palatable to my tastes buds and to parcel out in treat bags~

I found a Chex Party Mix recipe using Rice Chex cereal, a combination peanut butter and white baking chips, dry-roasted peanuts and peanut butter M&M’s here. I substituted my candy corn for the M&M’s, used mixed nuts & tossed in some pretzels to the mix for a little more salty to balance the sweet.

I still found myself picking around the candy corn :) but it’s a great way to use up your extra candy~

According to the National Confectioners Association:

Candy corn has been around for more than 100 years. George Renninger, and employee of the Wunderlee Candy Company, invented the popular confection in the 1800’s and Wunderlee became the first to produce the candy. The Goelitz Candy Company (now Jelly Belly Candy Company) started producing the confection in 1900 and still produces candy corn today.

Lack of machinery meant that candy corn was only made seasonally from March to November, remaining unchanged for more than 100 years. In 1900, it was the job of many men to produce candy corn for eight months of the year. Sugar, corn syrup and other ingredients were cooked into a slurry in large kettles. Fondant and marshmallow were added to give a smooth texture and bite. The 45 pounds of hot candy was poured into buckets called runners. Men dubbed stringers walked backwards pouring the candy into cornstarch trays imprinted with the kernel shape, taking three passes to make the white, yellow and orange colors. Originally, candy corn was delivered by wagon in wooden boxed, tubs and cartons.

I decided it might be fun to infuse some vodka to create a Candy Corn Martini and I found a recipe on Food Network here.

Food Network’s recipe called for infusing 1 1/2 cups of vodka with 1/2 cup of candy corn for 3 hours.

 After reading the comments I upped the quantity of my candy corn to a cup and let it “steep” for 3 days. It looked a little like a scary science experiment with the candy partially dissolved, but after straining the solids the result was a wonderful, clear orange color~ perfect for a Fall or Halloween cocktail!

Other ingredients found on the recipe link above are juice of a lemon, orange liqueur and 1 large egg white. Not terribly excited about using raw egg white, I substituted powdered egg whites instead.

A festive, seasonal { & potent! } cocktail that you only need ONE of~

 Some of the comments I read stated that the infused vodka & resulting martini didn’t taste much like candy corn and wasn’t very sweet~ which was perfect for my taste buds :) If you’re wanting a sweeter flavor, you could start with vanilla vodka since I found that the candy corn serves as coloring more than flavor.

A fun candy corn fact:

 More than 35 million pounds of candy corn will be produced this year. That equates to nearly 9 billion pieces—enough to circle the moon nearly 21 times if laid end-to end.

Some witch finger fun for treat bags~ you can find conjuring directions here.

Happy National Candy Corn Day!

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