Grab Some Homemade Candy Recipes

 Candy is a confection that so many people enjoy as a treat, and those that do so generally indulge at least once a week according to recent statistics.But where does candy come from and what exactly is it? Well, traditional candy is generally sugar boiled in either water or milk until it caramelises in to the hard substance that we know and love today Candy also refers to other foodstuffs such as candy bars though, and these can be many different things. Different centres are often surrounded by chocolate in popular confectionary that people buy on a regular basis, and there are so many types to try that it never gets boring. Small candies such as chocolate coated in a sugar shell are also a big seller, as are lollipops, which is hard candy on a stick.

All of these are stereotypically enjoyed mainly by children; by a lot of adults indulge their sweet tooth too.
  Candies, although not in the form we know them now, can be traced back to the Ancient Egyptians civilisations. A variety of different nuts and fruits that grew naturally were rolled in honey and left to set in this primitive type of candy, as refined sugar was not something that could be used. This practice of using honey coated nuts and fruits spread to China and the Arab countries soon after.

Sugar cane growth began to see what we now know as candy being formed. This was expensive though, and so only the upper classes could afford to indulge. With toothbrushes not being invented at the time though, this may not have been a bad thing.

The boiled sugar candies were seen in the American colonies of the 1600s and across Europe and so we know that they have taken this form since at least the seventeenth century.Cacao, which is used to make the hugely popular component of candy known as chocolate, was discovered in Mexico, and the development of candies using this soon began. This was used for coating fruits and on its own to make a tasty dish. People back as far as the Mayans used to have hot chocolate though, and so cacao had been used as a sweet delicacy long before it took the shape of a candy.


Candy really took off when techniques developed in the 1800s. Implements to help with production were developed and different flavours were tried out. Some old favourites such as lemon drops can be traced back to this time, and it is when sweet shops first began business.