Today's Safety Warning: Do not make hard candy when you're half asleep
I promised to make a batch of hard candy for one of my coworkers' boyfriends. I'm nice that way. On Friday, I finally got around to doing it.
The recipe I use is very simple: two cups sugar, 3/4 cup Karo (the house brands of corn syrup all contain HFCS; Karo does not.), bottle of candy-oil flavoring, little bit of gel food color. Put the Karo in a pot and heat it to boiling. Slowly add while stirring the sugar, stick in your thermometer, then stir until the sugar all dissolves. Then go the hell away until the temperature reaches 285 degrees. (The official recipe does two things different: it calls for 3/4 cup water, and it asks for a 310 degree final temperature. There are problems with that: if you use water the shit WILL boil ferociously when it hits 205 degrees, and will continue until 220 degrees. If you ignore it for even a second you will have sugar syrup all over the kitchen. Leave out the water and it won't do that. I go with the lower temp because at 300 degrees the sugar begins to caramelize. At 285 the final product is just as hard, but it's prettier because it hasn't started to turn brown yet.)
After you get it to temperature you pour it into molds, and here's the nastiness: I accidentally tipped the funnel I pour it with and got a stream of this shit on my hand. It will fuck you up. Make no mistake about that.
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SORRY!
ICE/cold water/noxzema.
and bacitracin or neosporin or one of those.
Has long been a term for molten sugar among cooking professionals. 
Water will only go up to 212 F, but sugar will go up almost to 400 F. Not only the heat, but the chemical reaction causes damage. At that temp, it's hydrophagic, bonding to water. REALLY nasty burns. If not handled carefully, it WILL cause severe damage. Scary s**t.
