# Fondant recipe?



## Phoenix (May 26, 2004)

Bring a quart of water to a boil in a medium to large pot. Turn off the heat and add five
pounds granulated sugar, stirring constantly. When dissolved, bring water back to a boil
and keep stirring. Use a candy thermometer and bring the mixture to 260-270 degrees
(hard ball candy state). Don't burn the sugar. Pour the mixture into molds (cookie sheet lined with wax paper works well). When cooled and set, break into convenient-sized
pieces and store in freezer, between wax paper sheets until needed. (Adapted from
Beekeeping, A Practical Guide, by Dick Bonney.)


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## magnet-man (Jul 10, 2004)

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> I was thinking some thing soft, like a taffy.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> 
Warnings: 
Do not boil sugar and water. This will cause the mixture to crystallize. 

Bee Candy 

Steps: 
1. Gather ingredients: 2 c. granulated sugar, 2 tbsp. corn syrup, 1/8 tsp. cream of tartar, and 1 1/2 c. water. 

2. Combine and heat ingredients. 

3. Stir until sugar dissolves. 

4. Heat without stirring to 238 degrees F or until the mixture reaches "medium ball" stage on a candy thermometer. YOU MUST HAVE A CANDY THERMOMETER!

5. Pour onto a cold platter and cool until warm to the touch. 

6. Beat until light. 

7. Pour into molds or shallow dishes. 


[color:red]   :d[/color]



[This message has been edited by magnet-man (edited November 23, 2004).]


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## Terri (Apr 14, 2003)

Thanks!

I think that I will tuck a container full into each of the hives, just to be certain.


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## Dick Allen (Sep 4, 2004)

It looks as though the recipe given by magnet-man came from The Beekeepers Handbook. Cream of tartar is included as an ingredient in the recipe. Yet a couple of pages earlier in the same book this is written: Tartaric acid beaks down the sugars, but there is some concern that it may be detrimental to bees, thus lately, its addition has not been recommended.

Leslie Baily Honey Bee Pathology writing about causes of dysentery in bees has this to say Sucrose partially hydrolysed by boiling with cream of tartar or vinegar, recommended by many beekeeping manuals as the basis of a solid candy for feeding the bees, is also toxic for bees when compared with plain sucrose 

Richard Bonney posted some comments on Bee-L a few years back regarding cream of tartar. 
http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9712D&L=bee-l&P=R1827 
http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9703B&L=bee-l&P=R2635 

Type cream of tartar in the archive search of Bee-L to read more comments.
http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-bin/wa?S1=bee-l 

The sugar candy recipe given in The Hive and the Honey Bee also lists cream of tartar. Personally, Id follow Dick Bonneys advice: Use it judiciously if at all.


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## chemistbert (Mar 4, 2004)

Any addition of acid to a sucrose solution will increase the inversion rate. Now I do not know if this is harmful to the bees as it is just a change in the sugar's optical properties but I know that life on Earth only uses levorotatory amino acids and dextrorotatory amino acids are excreted as waste. Can someone help me out. Is invert sucrose bad for bees?


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

magnet-man wrote: "Warnings: 
Do not boil sugar and water. This will cause the mixture to crystallize. "

Please explain this to me. I'd believe that prolonged boiling will reduce the amount of water in the solution, which may increase likelihood of crystallization, but I'd also tend to believe that just bring the solution to a boil and then reducing the heat should have no adverse affect on crystallization. No real basis for these comments - just intuition. Please help me understand.


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## SilverFox (Apr 25, 2003)

So which is better? With cream of tartar or without???????? Inquiring minds want to know!!!
I'll remove my foil hat just to receive the answer, But no longer.

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'WHEN WE CLOSE OUR EYES WE ALL LOOK THE SAME' GWPW 03

[This message has been edited by SilverFox (edited November 24, 2004).]


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## TwT (Aug 5, 2004)

heres a recipe. http://www.ingenbees.com/fondant.shtml


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## Dick Allen (Sep 4, 2004)

Here is yet another fondant recipe. The easy to remember 1-2-3-4-5 method.

One part water (wt.) mixed with 5 parts sugar (wt.) heated to 234º F. 
Allow it to cool down to around 200º F then beat the mixture and pour into molds. 

Regarding SilverFoxs question about using or not using cream of tartar, did you read the discussions on Bee-L? If you did, youll see there isnt a definite Yes or No agreement. Some wrote it was bad for bees, others claimed it did them no harm. Of those who thought it did no harm, it seems to me, most lived in southern areas. Those who thought it was harmful, seemed to me, to be more in the northern beekeeping areas. (But maybe that was my imagination, too.) Cream of tartar, in my understanding, is added in an effort to help bees invert sugar. One of those in the Bee-L discussion mentioned the amount of energy required by bees to invert sugar. He then wrote something to the effect that we need to give them all the help we can. Seems to me to be another example of people spending too much time and effort to *help* the *poor bees*. Both The Beekeepers Handbook and the 36th ed. of ABC and XYZ... list it as an ingredient for syrup or candy in one section of the books and in another section of those same books caution against its use. Again, IMO, (in Dick Bonneys words): Use it judiciously if at all.


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## SilverFox (Apr 25, 2003)

I read the article and still cann't come to a clear decision on "to tartar or not to tartar"
living in the pacfic nw I don't want to make the same mistake I made last year when I lost all my hives to a mistake in mixing Candy to feed, it went moldy and all were lost, to recoup this year it cost me $250.00 to replace the 5 hives, and now that I've 15 I don't wish to make the same mistake twice.
????SO TO TARTAR OR NOT TO TARTAR????
I'll even go so far as to not only remove my foil hat, but to also remove my 10lb magnet ear-rings (the ear-rings is what really makes it work ya know).

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'WHEN WE CLOSE OUR EYES WE ALL LOOK THE SAME' GWPW 03


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## BULLSEYE BILL (Oct 2, 2002)

>but I'd also tend to believe that just bring the solution to a boil and then reducing the heat should have no adverse affect on crystallization. 

I find that when I boil my water, pour in the sugar, bring the solution back to rolling, it does not crystalize as fast as when I do not bring it back to a boil.


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## franc (Jan 7, 2003)

all I do is mix sugar with alittle water.Just enough so the sugar isn't syrup but dough like


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## Beemaninsa (Jun 9, 2004)

I have also seen some fondant receipies calling for corn syrup. I thought corn syrup was bad for bees unless it was HFCS. I dunno.It must be those holes I drilled in my tin foil cap that Magnet man was suggesting. I think I should have taken the cap off before drilling the holes.


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## dickm (May 19, 2002)

From somewher I read that the act of heating the mixture ... inverts it. What then is the need for Tarter?

dickm


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

What inverts it is heating it with some mild organic acid included such as citric (lemon juice) or tarteric (cream of tarter).


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## Dick Allen (Sep 4, 2004)

The enzyme invertase added by the bees inverts it too. I agree with Dickm. What is the need for tartar?


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## Terri (Apr 14, 2003)

Well, I DID ask for a SOFT candy recipe. Cream of tarter and corn syrup are both used to make the candy soft and smooth, and not grainy.

When making fudge, you do not want it to crystalize. If it crystalizes the candy will be grainy.

The trick is to make the candy set up with very SMALL crystals. In order to do this, cream of tarter is added to start the forming crystals to be tiny. It gives them a guide, and the candy will be smooth nd fudge-like in texture. After it has started the reaction, the rest of the candy will set up in a similar fashion.

Corn syrup does the same thing. Also, the pan the candy is heated in is often buttered around the side to prevent the hardened splashes from acting as a guide and forming large crystals.

At one point, you stop stirring the fudge because the lack of agitation encourages the formation of large crystals.

Now, I CAN use corn syrup instead of cream of tarter to guide the bee candy into a soft, non-grainy shape.

But, is it true than high-fructose corn syrup is the only safe corn syrup? The corn syrup in the cupboard is a mix. Is it OK to use if I only use about half a cup????? 

[This message has been edited by Terri (edited November 25, 2004).]

[This message has been edited by Terri (edited November 25, 2004).]

[This message has been edited by Terri (edited November 25, 2004).]


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