[Sca-cooks] comfits?

[Tara Sersen Boroson]

I was just teasing you, you know :P

My initial thought was to ask if you'd used cast iron, but I reread and
saw that you didn't.  Metal or other chemical content in the water could
have affected it, but I don't know Lehigh Valley water to be all that
bad.  Have you tried it using bottled water, particularly distilled?

I've never done comfits, but I've done plenty of candy type things and
I've never had the sugar turn grey.  If you burned it, it would turn
brown then black.  The black part would stick to the bottom, and if you
stirred it in hard, it would come up in flecks or goops.  But, you would
have smelled it before it turned black.  Pee-yoo.  I slightly burned
sugar for cashew brittle a few months ago, didn't quite scorch it but it
started to brown.  Boy was it stinky.

Heating the sugar slowly helps you avoid burning it or boiling it over.
  In addition to making it hot, you're busy driving out most of the
water.    Basically, you add water to dissolve the sugar, and as the
solution gets hotter, it can hold more sugar - or, you can drive out
more water relative to the constant sugar content.  But, you don't want
to drive out *all* the water (thus you don't want to boil it violently.)
  That's when it begins to recrystalize.  The remaining water content
determines the stage.  It gets driven out at a different rate depending
on the temperature, but as long as it's not hot enough to burn it
quicker than you can stir it, it shouldn't make a difference.

Did the texture turn out correctly?  I wonder if maybe you didn't quite
reach soft-ball, the extra water could have affected it.

Dumb question:  How did you keep the syrup in the pan from burning while
you were busy futzing with the seeds and spoonsful of syrup?  Did you
take it off the burner?  If so, how did you keep it from cooling while
you were working?

-M

jenne at fiedlerfamily.net wrote:

> well, Magdalena points out I don't ask enough questions...
>
> Here's one.
> I'm experimenting with making comfits. For my first batch, I didn't get
> the heat high enough, and the second batch, it was too high, but I did get
> most of the seeds mostly covered with sugar. (I was starting from the
> instructions Gwen Cat put up for her feast, at:
> http://clem.mscd.edu/~grasse/GK_ASnovfeast.htm )
>
> But instead of being white, the sugar is sort of off-grey. Is this a
> sign of crystallizing? Did I cook the sugar too long? When you heat the
> syrup, is the idea to increase the temperature gradually or just get to
> the soft-ball stage as soon as possible? I used both enamel and stainless
> steel pots, it didn't seem to make a difference.
>
> -- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa
> jenne at fiedlerfamily.net OR jenne at tulgey.browser.net OR jahb at lehigh.edu
> "Are you finished? If you're finished, you'll have to put down the spoon."