Making Herbal Cough Drops Conclusion

So today was the day to try out the recipe for herbal cough drops.  I’m not the best cook and I’ve never made candy before, except for maple sugar candy, where you simply boil down maple syrup until it hardens when cooled. I decided to follow April Horton’s recipe.

I ordered the herbs and organic sugar from a reputable herbal company and bought a candy thermometer. On paper, it looked quite easy – little did I know the problems that would await me. Here’s my version of the recipe. I added ½ cup wild cherry bark, ¼ cup thyme and ¼ cup horehound to 2 cups filtered water in a quart saucepan with lid, put it on the stove and brought the mixture to a simmer, and continued to simmer for 40 minutes. All the herbs were cut and sifted, much like herbal tea. I filtered the mixture using a sieve with a new nylon stocking footlet insert – didn’t have cheesecloth. When I had bees, I used stockings to filter my honey and it worked really well.

Anyway, I added enough water to bring the tea back to 2 cups (probably wasn’t necessary), transferred the tea to a larger pan, added 2 1/3 cups organic sugar, and brought it to a slow boil. I watched it for it seemed like forever, with the temperature slowly rising. I honestly tried to follow the recipe but little did I know how difficult making candy is.  Augh! I did have the hint when my favorite cookbook, “The Joy of Cooking” by Irma Rombauer spent two pages in tiny print talking about threads, softballs, hardballs, soft cracks, etc. and the perils of sugaring.

Sure enough, my first attempt gave me herbal sugar, so I added more water and tried again. This time, it wasn’t as bad, but as I poured out the batch onto buttered aluminum foil on a cookie sheet and it started to make sugar again, I just quit. I’ve reconciled that I will never be a maker of candies, but I do plan on using my herbal cough sugar in tea when I need it. I was able to break up the batch into small chunks and they are now safely in the freezer.  So, final words on cough drops – do your best but don’t worry. My kitchen smells terrific: Herbal and aromatic with spearmint and I feel better already!