How to Make Jolly Ranchers Candy and Jolly Ranchers Lollipops!

Today I’m showing you how to make homemade Jolly Rancher hard candies and Jolly Rancher Lollipops! My viewers suggested this homemade candy recipe, so I’m here to show you the secret to making a perfect copycat Jolly Rancher!

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This first thing to note is that citric acid, which is used in the recipe is super sour. Like super, super sour. In fact, I recommend that you don’t dip a regular gummy straight into the container to test it’s sourness or you may end up without taste buds for the next few days. NOT that I would know anything about that or whatever . . . just saying . . . a friend told me. That being said, citric acid is key to this recipe. You can’t get the official Jolly Rancher taste without it. In the recipe, I added 1/2 teaspoon, but you could go up to about 1 teaspoon before having to be worried. If you were to leave the citric acid out, you would simply be making hard candy. 

Candy making often gets a bad wrap as time consuming and difficult. I definitely disagree with it being difficult in as far as the recipes that I have already instructed here, but it’s not that it’s time consuming- it’s more time sensitive. When the syrup hits the temperature, it must be off the heat immediately (it’s often best to remove it a few degrees before the mark to help prevent over cooking).  In this recipe, you also have two cooling wait times that must be gotten to at the right time. The first is about 20-25 minutes after pouring the syrup into a bread loaf pan and scoring the candy, and the second is you have to wait until the scored candy slab is completely cooled before breaking the pieces apart. All in all, it pretty much just takes patience.

Homemade Jolly Rancher Candy
Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup white corn syrup
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 teaspoon citric acid (get it here)
• 1-2 drams hard candy flavouring (get it here)
• gel paste (get it here)

Procedure:

1. In a medium sized saucepan, over medium heat, combine water, sugar and corn syrup together and stir until incorporated.
2. Once sugar has dissolved, insert candy thermometer and heat mixture until 300F (hard crack). Remove from heat and pour in flavouring, coloring and citric acid. Stir until bubbles have disappeared. Pour the hot liquid into parchment lined loaf pan. Allow to cool for about 20-25 minutes.
3. Once cooled slightly, remove candy from the pan and score the slab of candy with a sharp knife in one direction, then score it in the opposite directions to form small rectangles.
4. Allow scored slab of candy to cool completely before breaking or cutting along the score lines.
5. Wrap candy in clear cellophane for serving.

How to Make Jolly Rancher Lollipops
Ingredients:

• Jolly Rancher hard candies
• Silicone lollipop mold (get it here)
• Lollipop sticks

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 275F.
2. Fill each cavity tightly full of jolly ranchers. Place into the oven and allow the candy to melt completely, around 15-18 minutes. Insert the lollipop stick and allow to cool completely before popping out of the mold.

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