Learn to Measure Candy Temperature With Just Cold Water (2024)

FAQs

Learn to Measure Candy Temperature With Just Cold Water? ›

To test your candy temperature, you'll want a bowl of cool water to drip the sugar into. You'll know you've reached the soft ball stage when the sugar forms a small ball in the water. The ball will quickly flatten after a few moments of handling as it warms in your hand.

Drop a small amount of the candy mixture with a teaspoon into a small bowl of cold water. Each time you test the candy use a fresh bowl of cold water. If the candy forms a thin thread and does not "ball up", it is in the thread stage or 230°—235°F. This stage is similar to sugar syrup rather than candy.

For the Cold Water Test: 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of the syrup (candy mixture) is dropped from a clean spoon into a small bowl of very cold water (not ice cold). Quickly examine and/or carefully pick up the sugar from the cold water. The firmness of the sugar indicates the highest temperature the syrup reached.

Using a clean spoon, carefully take a little of the syrup and drop it into the bowl of cold water. Leave to cool for a moment then pick up the ball of syrup. If it's pliable, sticky and can be moulded in your fingers easily, it has reached the soft ball stage and the syrup can be used to make fudge and marzipan.

I have never used a candy thermometer when I make fudge and my fudge always turns out perfectly. I use the cold water drop test. When a drop of my pre-chocolate fudge mixture is dropped into a cup of very cold water and makes a soft flexible ball (soft ball stage), the fudge mixture temperature is 235–240 degrees F.

300° F–310° F

The hard-crack stage is the highest temperature you are likely to see specified in a candy recipe. At these temperatures, there is almost no water left in the syrup. Drop a little of the molten syrup in cold water and it will form hard, brittle threads that break when bent.

If you leave your elbow in the water or 5–10 seconds, you'll be able to form a rough idea of the water's temperature. If the water feels slightly warm, but not hot, it's around 100 °F (38 °C).

Cold water is one of the most common methods for testing candy temperature without a thermometer. To use this method, place a small piece of the candy in cold water and wait a few minutes. If the candy hardens, it is ready to be used. If it does not harden, it is still being prepared.

Best Overall: Williams Sonoma Easy Read Candy Thermometer

Out of all the candy thermometers we tested, this model was the easiest to use, with a sturdy clip and consistent, accurate temperature readings in both boiling water and melted sugar.

A candy thermometer's long, narrow shape allows you to safely check the temperature of hot sugar or hot oil without burning yourself. A meat thermometer is much shorter in length, and its temperature range isn't typically high enough for cooking sugar.

How do you test fudge without a thermometer? ›

Even without a candy thermometer, you can still check if the fudge is cooked by doing a cold water test. Drop a piece of hot fudge into a glass filled with ice water. It should form a soft ball that can easily flatten between your fingers.

If the fudge is very soft and slightly chewy then it is possible that it did not quite cook to soft ball stage and next time the mixture should be cooked to a slightly higher temperature (soft ball is 112-116c/235-240F and a sugar or candy thermometer can help).

Basically you cook the maple syrup to soft ball stage which is 235˚F. You don't have to get the temperature exact. If you don't have a candy thermometer, just let it cook for about 5 minutes, it should be bubbling, the color will darken and it will reduce in volume.

Every few minutes, drop a small spoonful of syrup into the cold water. Let the candy cool for a second, then form it into a ball with your hand. Compare the shape and texture of the candy to the chart below to determine the approximate temperature of the syrup.

Sure, they're great for monitoring the state of sugar for some homemade nut brittle or caramel topping for ice cream, but they can do so much more. A candy thermometer is perfect for deep frying — another notoriously fickle task in a home kitchen.

Immerse your hand in the water, try to form the sugar into a ball, and bring it out of the water. The shape and texture of the resulting sugar blob will tell you the approximate temperature of your candy. Use the chart below to translate the sugar's shape into a numerical temperature.

The coloring and the sugar molecules both have positive and negative charges on them. The water molecule has positive and negative charges so it can attract and dissolve the color and sugar pretty well.

Sugar and water molecules will attract each other and form bonds and if the attraction is strong enough... they will separate! The sugar and water molecules would separate and dissolve regardless of temperature but it happens a lot quicker in the hot water.

Less sugar is visible in the hot water than in the cold, meaning that more sugar dissolves in the hot water than in the cold water. There is no obvious difference between the amount of salt that dissolves in the hot water compared to the cold water.

If you have extra time, you can have students observe what happens to the candy hearts over longer periods of time. We noticed that after about an hour, even some of the candy hearts in water began floating to the top and also started dissolving.