I have to admit it is hard for me to throw away food. I will do anything I can to repurpose leftovers into a new recipe. Some attempts are more successful than others, I will confess, but overall it tends to work out. After I made the red, white, and blue rock candy I couldn’t bear to throw out all the leftover flavored sugar syrup. Since most hard candy is just sugar syrup cooked until it reaches the hard crack stage that seemed like the best use for all the extra syrup. Plus, I had been wanting to try this sea glass candy ever since I saw it a few years ago on Not So Humble Pie. It is so beautiful to look at and easier to make than hard candy that needs to be poured into mold.

Since the goal of making hard candy is to prevent it from crystalizing I added a squirt of corn syrup to the leftover syrup, cooked it to hard crack stage, added a bit more flavoring and poured it into a prepared pan. (It also works to pour it into lollipop molds at this point , if you want to turn the leftover syrup into lollipops instead.) The fun part comes after the candy has cooled. Since hard cooked sugar shatters much like glass I broke the candy up by dropping the pan on the counter with quite a bit of force, creating a very satisfying crash. Perhaps I should have warned my husband ahead of time because he came running from the other room to make sure everything was ok! The end result was worth it, and that is what matters.

Since I am assuming that some of you out there may want to make this recipe but don’t happen to have leftover rock candy syrup lying around I am posting the recipe for making the candy from scratch. To make it using the leftover syrup simply add a generous squirt of corn syrup to the mixture and then proceed according to the directions in the recipe. You will still want to add more flavor, even though it already has some, because some of the flavor will cook out while the candy is cooking.