More Bee Candy

In January I made bee candy to put in the lang.    Candy making is not exactly my forte and when I mentioned it on the bee forum, someone was nice enough to send me a slightly different recipe.    I tried it out and I like this one a bit better.

Thank you Tefer2!

Tefer2's  Bee Candy
www.rurification.com

• 5 lbs sugar
• 2 cups water
• 1 tablespoon white vinegar

Use a tall pan with a wide bottom.   Like this one.

Bring water to boil and stir in vinegar and sugar.    Return to boil.   Stir a few times until it starts boiling hard, then leave it alone.   Heat to 242 degrees.     Turn off heat and let it sit until it cools to 200 degrees.  Stir until opaque and pour into molds, bowls, etc.

Tefer2 says this:

'The trick with the final stirring is cooling it before it starts to set up on you.  If you let it cool too much it will get too hard to pour. I start my final stirring somewhere between 180-200.  The hotter it is, the longer you will have to stir to cool it to reach opaque color.   I line my mold with clear saran wrap so it doesn't stick.   Use extra wrap over the sides because it shrinks some from the heat.   You can use any size mold you like.   You can even just pour it out flat on a lined baking tray.   The vinegar works better than cream of tartar.'

I did pour it flat on a baking tray covered with aluminum foil.   Worked great.  Broke apart into chucks that fit nicely on the frame tops.    

To speed up the stirring, use a mixer or hand blender.   Quit as soon as it starts to cloud up because it'll set up fast then. 

Candy Board for Hungry Bees

Bees can starve over the winter.   Even if they've got a hive full of honey, they can still run out of stores and if there's nothing in bloom outside, they'll starve.

We left our hives plenty of honey for a regular cold winter.   In a cold winter, the bees stay in a tight cluster and move as little as possible except to get to the next row of honey cells.  Little movement requires little food. 

If the fall lasts for a while, or if the winter is warmer, then the bees are more active.   When the bees are active, they use more food.

Since this is our first winter with the bees, we left them as much honey as we could.   We were confident that they'd have enough honey.   

But since we really have no idea what we're doing, we weren't sure and when it warmed up after the big snow, the bees were active, so we thought we'd better prep some emergency food for them and then go in and check them.   I'd hate to lose my hives over something that we could fix so easily.

The easiest emergency bee food is sugar.     When it's warm, you feed them syrup.  When it's cold you feed them either dry sugar or a candy board or sugar bricks.  

I thought I'd try making some sugar bricks. 

Confession:   It was supposed to be a candy board type of thing.

My friend, Chris, posted a great recipe for a candy board on his blog and somewhere in translation, I screwed something up. 

In the end they were too soft.   Probably because I stirred at the wrong time during the boil.   Or because I mixed it too much at the end.   Or because this is the humidity capital of the universe. 

At any rate, they broke apart really easily.   Fortunately, the bees won't care.   

The big question is this:  Do I want to spend time doing one of these for every hive every year, just in case?    

It's a good question.     The bricks were easy to make and didn't take any longer than a batch of jam.   You can make them early and store them in a ziplock until you need them.  They are super fast to lay in a hive.  If you don't use them, you drop them in water in the summer and make syrup with them to feed that way.  

The jury is still out - I can't decide.   I made one batch of sugar bricks.  Enough for one hungry hive. 

The other option I seriously considered is using dry sugar.    We decided to try that for the other hive in case they needed food, too.    Stay tuned.

Crystallized Ginger

My experiences with candy have not been exactly successful.

Entertaining, yes.   Successful, no.

So, it's been a while since I've done the candy thing. 

Even so, I've been thinking about making candied ginger for a long time.    And now is the time.

Yep.

Any minute now.  

Excuse me while I steel my nerve. 

OK.   I'm ready.    I'll be back when I'm done.

....

Dudes.   This was sooooo much easier than I thought.    Seriously. 

The first thing I did was do a bit of recipe research.    One set of recipes sliced the ginger very very thinly and did only one boil, then dried it for a few hours and coated with sugar.   The other group sliced the ginger thinly and did two boils, with the final one going until all the liquid was completely evaporated.

I tried the first method first because it seemed easier but the ginger stayed tough and very VERY hot.   Also, not sweet enough.   

Crystallized ginger should be seriously sweet.     Really, what's the point if it's not seriously sweet?

So, I tried the second method.    We have a winner!

Here is what you do:

1.   Buy fresh ginger.   The roots should be firm.

2.   Peel the ginger.   I saw on Cooks Illustrated that it's easier if you use the side of a spoon to scrape the peel and it worked like a charm. 

3.  Chop the ginger.    In chunks or slices, whatever you want.    You do not have to slice it paper thin like some recipes say.   I did chunks.    I like chunks.   Chunks are great.

4.  Put the ginger in a saucepan.   Measure the water you put in.  Put in enough water to cover the ginger.

5.  Put an equal amount of sugar in the pan - that's why you needed to measure the water you put in.

6.  Boil for 45 minutes or so.   The ginger will shrink some and turn golden in the center as it cooks.

7.  Drain the syrup off the ginger.   Save the syrup!  It's very hot, but great for fruit salads, or homemade ginger ale or drizzled over grapefruit and broiled.....  Plus you need a bit of the syrup for the next step.

[The first set of recipes stopped here.   Dry the ginger for several hours or overnight.  Make sure the pieces aren't touching as they dry.    Toss with sugar.]    But really, don't stop there!!   Keep going!

8.  Measure the ginger as you put it back in the saucepan [or another smaller one]. 

9.  Put an equal amount of sugar in the pan and 2 Tablespoons of syrup for every cup of ginger.

The sugar and ginger will look damp, but not at all wet.   You might think it looks too dry.   That's ok.    As soon as things heat up again, the ginger will release more liquid and it will get wetter.   If you think you need more liquid, add a bit more.  It won't hurt and it will make you feel better, which is important when you're making candy.   I know.

10.  Put the pan on medium heat and let it come to a boil.   You can turn the heat down a bit if you want to, but you want to keep a good boil.   Stir OFTEN.   Keep an eye on this.  As it boils way down, you'll want to stir constantly so that it doesn't start to burn.

11.  Boil until all of the liquid boils out and the sugar separates out and gets dry.   Stir constantly at the end!

12.  As soon as it gets dry, take it off the heat. 

13.  Put paper under a cooling rack.   I used the shelves from my dehydrator.  Worked like a charm.

14.  Spread the ginger out on the rack to cool and let the sugar fall through onto the paper.   Keep the sugar!  







15.  It'll cool pretty fast.   Taste it.

I know. 

I know!

Keep your ginger and sugar in jars, away from humidity.