Rapunzel Displaced, Braided Taffy

Braided Taffy

Ingredients
2 Cups Sugar
2 Tablespoons Cornstarch
1 Cup Light Corn Syrup
3/4 Cup Water
2 Tablespoons Butter
1 Teaspoon Salt
1/4 to 1 Teaspoon Mint Flavoring
1/4 to 1 Teaspoon Berry Flavoring
3 drops yellow food coloring
3 drops purple food coloring

1. Mix together sugar and cornstarch in the saucepan.

2. Use a wooden spoon to stir in the corn syrup (1), water, butter, and salt. Place the saucepan over medium heat and stir until the sugar dissolves (2).

3. Continue stirring until mixture begins to boil, then let cook, undisturbed, until it reaches about 270 degrees F or the soft-crack stage. Wash down the sides of the pan with a pastry brush dipped in warm water while the syrup cooks (3).

4. Remove the saucepan from the heat and divide into two halves (4). Add yellow food coloring and mint flavoring into one half of the taffy mixture (5). Stir gently, and then pour onto a greased marble slab or into a shallow greased cooked sheet to cool.

5. When the taffy is cool enough to handle, grease your hands with oil or butter and pull the taffy in a downward motion. Hold the taffy at the top, pull downward, and then fold upward, doubling the taffy on itself. Repeat by pulling downward and then folding both ends together again. Keep pulling downward and repeating this motion until you get a long rope of taffy that is light in color and has a golden, satiny gloss (6).

6. Whisk in berry flavoring and purple food coloring to the other half of the taffy mixture (7). When cooled, pull this taffy long enough to perfectly match (8) the golden strand.

7. Intertwine the purple strand with the golden rope of taffy by twisting the two strands together (9). Then cut the rope into 1 inch long pieces with greased scissors or a butter knife (10). Let the pieces sit for about half an hour while the two colors meld together in their individual pieces (11). Then apply a few drops of warm water to the outside of the taffy pieces (12) and wrap them in wax paper or plastic wrap and twist together the ends of the wrapper (13).

EXPLANATIONS
(1) Just like the sorceress in the story, corn syrup and butter act as "interfering agents" in this and many other candy recipes. they contain long chains of glucose molecules that tend to keep the sucrose molecules in the taffy syrup from crystallizing. If you leave out the corn syrup, you get a candy with a very creamy, soft texture - something that hasn't been interfered with (a normal child not taken away by a sorceress.)

(2) The child is a mixture of the main ingredients - mom and dad - that are dissolved together.

(3) While the syrup (baby) is cooking, the parents are aware of the agreement with the sorceress and must wash away their joy in a child.

(4) The one becomes two

(5) Golden strands of Rapunzel's hair. Mint flavoring is a green, leafy plant that can be used in salads, like Rampion or Rapunzel. Rapunzel, the girl, must also be filled with the plant that is her name because her mother ingested it while pregnant.

(6) Rapunzel's hair that grows and becomes a ladder which the sorceress can use to climb to the girl. The hair is let down and then pulled upward again.

(7) Berry flavoring because the prince eats only berries and bark from the woods once he is blinded by the scorceress and purple because it is the color of royalty.

(8) The prince realizes (quite quickly) that Rapunzel is his match.

(9) Prince and Rapunzel's union

(10) Sorceress finds out and cuts them apart, removing Rapunzel from the Prince's grasp

(11) Although the sorceress has separated the couple, they cannot help but be together in both love and the children they have created.

(12) Warm water, like Rapunzel's tears, is healing as the pieces of taffy get wrapped and packaged together.

(13) The taffy recipe produces taffy pieces that are very similar - two colors and flavors that are twisted together like the twins that are the result of Rapunzel and the Prince's union.