Lemon Drop Candy Recipe

Homemade Sour Hard Candies

Prep Time 30

Cook Time 30

Total Time 3

Servings candies

Calories 28

Squeeze lemons until you get 1 cup of fresh juice.
Combine lemon juice and sugar and stir to dissolve.
Boil mixture until thick and syrupy—about 20-30 minutes, stirring regularly. Test the syrup by dropping a small bit into cold water—if it crystallizes and becomes brittle, it’s ready!
*Taste your mixture as you go—if there's any hint of burnt flavor, it's a good time to stop cooking. (Even if your test droplets aren't totally crystallizing yet—see note below.)
Spray down a mini muffin tin or silicone mold with cooking spray and add heated mixture to the tin/mold. Fill each mini muffin cup less than halfway full, or fill small silicone molds about ¾ full. (I used a cooking syringe to help transfer my syrup into the silicone molds.)
Transfer filled molds to the fridge to cool until hardened, ~1-2 hours.
Pop out and enjoy!
Yields 30 homemade lemon drop hard candies.

Making homemade hard candy can be tricky, and your mixture can go from tasty to burnt-tasting quickly.
Based on what I've heard from others who've tried this recipe, I recommend tasting your mixture as you go. If there's any hint of burnt flavor or the flavor starts to become less lemony, that's a good time to stop cooking! (Even if your test droplets aren't totally crystallizing yet.)
Rather than waiting for your mixture to stick to the pan or crystallize in the pan, continue checking the mixture for brittleness by dropping it in cold water – and make sure the water is genuinely cold!
Check out the video embedded in the post at the 1:20 mark, and you can see what that brittleness looked like for me. In a clear glass cup, you should be able to see the droplets crystallize in the water and that’s the signal that it’s ready.

Serving: 1homemade lemon drop | Calories: 28kcal | Carbohydrates: 7g | Sugar: 7g