Zoe-the-daughter was given this cracker of a sweet book for her birthday from her friend Livvie. Every day since then she’s been niggling at me to make something. I finally gave in on Saturday and she made rose water Edinburgh rock.
As we all know, the rule of successful cooking is to read the recipe carefully, understand it and make sure you have everything ready before you start. So, Zoe said she was sorted and I believed her. I was changing the bed upstairs when she called, “Mum, what’s ‘soft crack’ and how do I make a water bath?”
Hence ‘hard crack’ had replaced ‘soft crack’ by the time I made it back downstairs. Then Ged-the-husband strode into the kitchen and told me off for committing such a dangerous act as sweet making with a 12 yr old and reminded me just how bloody hot molten sugar is to handle. He suggested that Zoe wear latex gloves on top of her horse riding gloves and I have to say that it worked a treat. Why does anyone ever pull hot sugar with their naked hands? Ged also cleaned the hardened sugar off the marble slab. He’s rather lovely really. So here’s the recipe which I advise reading carefully. A sugar thermometer is highly recommended too. 
We also made a little video of the sugar pulling which is quite amusing so I’ll let you have a look. Johnnie Mountain has a similar video on his website (remember the crazy sugar pulling he did on Great British Menu) but ours is more amusing.
Oh my god – sounds terrifying. I love making sweets (and my sugar thermometer) but this does sound particularly hard core. Go girl!
There are some freaky sweets in that book such as salt water taffy, which we may try next. Did you watch our video versus Johnnie’s? I found it very funny that he said normal sugar and commercial food colouring would never work – Zoe didn’t seem to have any problems. Ha ha.
PS I’ve been using this book for sweets (it’s a bit more self-consciously glam) amzn.to/YDFGWV, but I’ll look out for yours’ too.
This link should work better
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Indulgence-Petits-Fours-Murdoch-Books/dp/1741961181/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1359538513&sr=1-1
I’ll have a gander. Do you know that I had no idea golden syrup was the same thing as corn syrup until we made these sweets? No need for glycerine at all.
In case you hadn’t seen it, I have a blog, address above. Like you, I don’t often post in it. Maybe if you were looking at mine, and I was looking at yours, it might be an encouragement to us to write more? I often post some thoughts in fb that I realise would have made a good blogpost, but can’t be bothered then to write them up.
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