never again

I have a serious fixation on candy corn. I'll admit that it's not a classy candy. It has no exotic ingredients and it's not crafted by French monks. You could argue that it has a slight honey taste, but eating a handful of them is really just like mainlining sugar. Most people I talk with turn up their noses at bad memories of a stale bowl of the candy sitting on a coffee table. I'd eat those ones, too. Each week, A, loving wife that she is, looks the other way as I toss a bag of candy corn into our shopping basket. It's an insatiable addiction.

Still, when it comes to my corn, I'm a bit of a purist. Candy corn is best consumed in October. It also should not taste of chocolate like the so-called "Indian Corn." The most leeway I am willing to allow is for a mellowcreme pumpkin, which is little more than GIANT candy corn. Therefore, I don't want to see "Bunny Corn," "Reindeer Corn," "Cupid Corn," or "Veteran Corn" when it is inevitably created. Other holidays don't need their own candy corn; Halloween needs candy corn.

And I need candy corn. So when I came across a recipe for homemade candy corn, it seemed like the perfect, mildly neurotic cooking activity for last weekend. As candy goes, it even seemed simple. No candy thermometer. No esoteric ingredients. Food coloring was the only ingredient we didn't have on hand. And here is where ethics collides with fun - New Seasons carries only a few large bottles of standard food coloring (none of the primary-color sample packs) and a couple shades of all-natural alternatives for a lower price. Thanks to their ethics (and my stinginess) we bought one bottle of beet coloring instead of a bottle each of industrial red and yellow dyes. I ended up with pastel pink rainbow corn.


Making the candy was the most tedious process imaginable. For some reason, I disregarded the fact that every single person online who has tried the recipe complained about the time it took. Chalk it up to sugar-induced mania on my part.


The process starts out alright - you heat the ingredients, knead in the dye, and roll out ropes that you press together into three-color bands. Then comes the shaping. You cut and cut and cut and end up with piles of rough triangles that need to be individually pressed and rolled between your fingers to take on that classic kernel shape. Sticky hell.


Two-and-a-half hours later, we finally had enough to fill a 99 cent bag. But hey, at least A didn't have to shamefully hide my candy addiction underneath our bulk grains and organic produce at the grocery store.