There’s nothing like homemade hard candy, except snow-covered hard candy.
Colorful and sweet to taste, hard tack candy takes center stage on any table, or cookie tray.

My snow-covered hard candy recipe is just 6 ingredients to sweetness!
I am about to share a super easy old-fashioned snow-covered hard candy recipe that you can make in any flavor for the holidays!
Some call it hard tack candy, others call it Christmas Crack, and others just call it hard candy.
There’s no right or wrong with it comes to old-fashioned snow-covered hard candy.
When I was a little girl, my mom made this candy once a year in multiple flavors and colors.
Once she was done, a rainbow of Holiday colors appeared in clear glass jars and the hard candy tasting party began.
In fact, the recipe for super easy old-fashioned snow-covered hard candy is much more simple than you might think!
Really, you’ll find your biggest challenge is choosing a color and a flavor.
After that, it’s all about the crack of the candy!
Old-Fashioned Snow-Covered Hard Candy
What do I know about old-fashioned snow-covered hard candy?
Well, I remember seeing some of this on my great grammas shelf in a glass jar.
I was always curious why it was so high up there and out of reach.
Since hard candy can be a choking hazard for kids, my great gramma kept it high up and away from us.
But, the colors in the glass jar, are what I most remember.
Clear glass, yet coated in what I would call snow.
You guessed it, that’s where I got my name of snow-covered hard candy.
And of course, you figured it out as well, that it just be old-fashioned because I saw it long ago, in my great gramma’s home.
My mom then continued on the tradition of making this sweet treat and it’s a generational, handed-down to me, recipe.
Homemade Christmas Sweet Treats
Really, when you stop and think about it, there’s one time of year when we go ‘all-in’ when it comes to making easy holiday treats.
It’s during Christmas, right?
I guess you could say the time starts right after Halloween exits and stops just short of the new year when we all give up sugar splurging.
No worries, because once you taste what you’ve made, this jar of candy won’t make it to the end of December.
One by one, piece by piece, the old-fashioned snow-covered hard candy just seems to disappear from the jar, faster than snow melts when exposed to a warm day!
Colors for the snow-covered hard candy
You can use any color you want to celebrate the holidays.
I chose green for ivy, holly, Christmas trees, etc.
Flavoring hard tack candy
Now once you’ve decided to make this recipe then you need to know how to flavor it right?
How do you flavor hard tack candy?
I stumble every single time I make a batch of hard tack candy, over the flavor I want to make?
There are so many flavor options and I like to change it up!
You can make buttered rum, or toffee, green apple, blue raspberry (and no the glass does not have to be blue!).
There are so many great flavors to choose from and I love this for caramel flavor!
As far as flavors go, make sure to get a Super Strength like these fabulous oils or you may be competing with the sugar itself.
The Tip You Need Before You Tackle Snow-Covered Old-Fashioned Hard Candy.
Back in the day, I do remember my mom struggling with the cleanup.
While this is easy to make, no one tells you about how terrible cleanup can be.
SO, let me help you out here.
Use a silicone mat, oversized on a pan.
Have one person pour while the other person makes sure the mat flattens as you pour.
Then, once it is dried, it’s a matter of wiping the silicone mat with a wet paper towel and tossing it back in its holding drawer.
No pan to clean, nothing!
Otherwise, good luck to you cleaning that pan, and really a greased pan, change the glass, it does get smeared when you touch it!
Recipe For The Snow-Covered Hard Candy
Snow-Covered Hard Candy In any Flavor
Ingredients
- CANDY BASE
- 1 cup of water
- 1 1/2 Cups of Light Corn Syrup
- 3 3/4 C of White Sugar
- tool: Candy Thermometer
- FLAVORING & COLORING
- 1 Tsp Food Coloring of choice
- a TABLESPOON of an extract of your choice refer to post for notes on what type to use
- 1/3 C Confectioner’s Sugar sifter too for dusting on the snow.
- Parchment paper.
- Silicone mat
- Rimmed baking sheet
- Meat Hammer or Rolling Pin
- Candy Jar
Instructions
- Gather all of your ingredients before you even start.
- Make sure to line your rimmed baking sheet with a silicone mat and lay aside, or,
- If you don’t have a silicone mat, you will need to grease that sheet so that it does not stick, then lay it aside.
- Pull out your food coloring and flavoring and have them ready as well.
- Prep your saucepan (medium-sized) with water, sugar, and corn syrup.
- Begin on medium heat, and stir until the mixture dissolves.
- Once it is fully dissolved, you will allow this to come to a boil.
- However, you don’t want this on high heat, just a consistent medium heat boil and KEEP watching it.
- Do attach your candy thermometer at this point.
- Allow this to boil but do NOT stir this boiling mixture.
- Instead, just allow it to boil until it reaches 300°F on your thermometer.
- Once you reach 300°F or 310°F MAXIMUM, it’s time to remove it from the heat.
- Now you will work quickly.
- First, add in the color, do beware, it can ‘pop’ when it goes in, which means it might spit a little of the color at you.
- Next, add in your flavor choice .and stir.
- Pour onto the prepared silicone-lined tray.
- It sets so quickly so you can follow that with ‘snow’ to snow-cover it.
- This is simply confectioner’s sugar.
- Let this whole large piece of candy cool for about an hour (even longer, is fine.)
- Last, you get to break this.
- It can be done in so many ways.
- I actually covered mine with a layer of parchment and used a meat hammer.
- However, you can also work from the bottom of the silicone mat and fold it over itself, this will break it into chunks
- Use a hard wooden spoon end, whatever you want to break into bite-size pieces.
- Again, lightly dust the broken pieces with more ‘snow’.
- Store in an airtight container and enjoy! ~ Dana XO
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