Just Sugar Lollipops

In preparation for Halloween parties and trick-or-treating, I finally made the Just Sugar Lollipop recipe I'd discovered over at Kids With Food Allergies! I've been planning on it for ages, but it's just been one of those things that kept getting pushed to another day.

I'll let you hop on over to the full recipe at Kids With Food Allergies but all you need is lollipop sticks, plain old granulated sugar, golden syrup (I used Lyle's) and water! I also really suggest you use a candy thermometer and a silicone mat like Silpat. Maybe I just wasn't making as big of lollipops as the recipe intended, but I made 3 dozen and then had to toss the rest of the sugar because I burnt it. So if you only made 16, they would be really huge lollipops!

I think next time I'll just make a half batch because my problems arose when I filled up my 2 silicone mats with lollipops, they hadn't set up yet, and then my sugar mixture got too hot. You can see from the picture all the different shades of the lollipops. The lightest were made first, the medium golden were my 2nd pan and off in the far right you can see a really dark one. I made a few with the darken sugar but it smelled so burnt I decided to stop. I was glad I did after tasting a cooled one - the really dark ones tasted burnt too.

I've seen more professional looking plastic bags that would be great for giving these as gifts or party favors, but I didn't have any of those handy, so waxed paper squares worked just fine. :)