The Novice Foodie's Deadline Trick? A Candy Corn Treat

Much like deadlines, Halloween is a holiday that often sneaks up on me. I always have grand ideas for costumes (or columns), I lose track of time, and then I've got to throw something together. (Except for last year, when I planned my costume a year in advance.) This Halloween, I still don't know what my costume will be, and my column this week was thrown together at the last second.

What to do when a deadline looms? Recreate a classic. In this case, the ubiquitous fall sweet, candy corn.

Sadly, homemade candy corn is full of ingredients fairly similar to store-bought: granulated sugar, powdered sugar, light corn syrup, butter, vanilla, powdered milk and food coloring. Basically, a healthy snack. But it's fun to make and would be good for kids, as the majority of the work involves playing with the dough. I used this recipe from Serious Eats.

I began by sifting TWO AND A HALF CUPS of powdered sugar with a bit of powdered milk. Powdered milk is a sickly yellowish color and smells weird; powdered sugar is a bitch to sift.

Then, in a saucepan, I melted salted butter, granulated sugar and corn syrup -- except, first, I accidentally started pouring the corn syrup into my sifted sugar/milk combo. (I do stuff like this all the time. The other day in the shower, I put conditioner on my face.) Luckily, corn syrup is slow-moving, and I scooped out the tablespoon or so in the powdered sugar and threw it right in with the butter mixture.

After the butter mixture comes to a boil, you stir it for five minutes or so, turn off the heat, mix in the vanilla and then mix in the powdered sugar and powdered milk.