How to Pull Taffy

Old-fashioned salt water taffy is a staple of candy shops, which often feature taffy being repeatedly pulled on a large metal machine in the window. Salt water taffy does not contain ocean water and can be made at home. In order for it to achieve its light, chewy texture, taffy must be aerated, a process of incorporating air bubbles throughout the candy. You can make taffy at home and pull it with your hands to achieve the correct taste. This article will show you how to pull taffy to the perfect consistency.


STEPS ON HOW TO PULL TAFFY:

1. Make your taffy.

2. Let the taffy stand until it is cool enough throughout to touch with your fingers.

3. Wash your hands thoroughly, then butter them. Pick up the taffy with 2 hands. Form the taffy into a ball.

4. Pull your right and left hands away from each other sideways in front of your body. (You will be pulling taffy for quite a while, so find a comfortable position or friends to help).

5. Double the taffy on itself by bringing the ends together on the left side and pulling the middle with your right hand.

If you plan on making a lot of taffy, invest in a taffy hook. They are available through online kitchen stores. Install this large metal hook on your wall, clean it, and then hook the taffy around the middle, and pull. Double the taffy on the hook. Pull and repeat. This allows you to pull back and use momentum to help you, making it less exhausting.
Regrease your hands with butter as needed throughout the process of pulling.

6. Pull the taffy until it is light in color and stiff. This will indicate there are enough air bubbles inside to make it fluffy. Pulling taffy can take 15 to 60 minutes, depending upon the number of people you have pulling and the amount of taffy you are working with.

7. Pull hard on 1 end of the taffy so that it is stretched into a thin rope. You may need to take it between your 2 palms and rotate your hands back and forth to keep the round rope shape. Cut the taffy with clean, greased scissors and wrap the taffy in wax paper.

8. Twist together ropes of different colors and flavors to form a striped candy. Cut with greased scissors and wrap in wax paper squares.

Taffy Overview

With a history that spans back for centuries, the taffy is a candy that contains two of the flavors that are most basic: fat (usually butter, but sometimes they use vegetable oil instead) and sugar.

Mixing the butter and the sugar aren’t the only things you need to do, if you want to make taffy. These ingredients should be boiled together, making a sticky and thick mass. After that mass of butter and sugar is created, you have to stretch it and pull it for a long period of time. In the past, this mass would’ve been stretched manually, an activity that took hours. These days, a special taffy machine is used to pull it. This machine has three bars, which spin around, pulling the taffy candy. Since the taffy is pulled automatically, a lot of effort and time is saved, so more taffy is produced, at a lower cost. Some candy shops have these machines, so you might’ve seen them at some point, while you walked past these stores.

Salt water taffy is something that you probably heard about. The origin of this type of taffy is the city of Atlantic City, from New Jersey. Despite its name, and of what most people believe, this type of taffy doesn’t have salt water in it.

There are a number of stories that try to explain why salt water taffy has this name. A story that is popular, tells how Bradley David, a store owner, had a flood in his building. As a result, all his normal taffy got soaked by the water from the ocean. A customer came inside later and asked for taffy. Bradley answered that he only had some salt water taffy. It sounded good to the client, so he bought it anyway. The name remained in use ever since. Whether the story is true or not is not known, but it’s a nice little story.

These days, taffy is made out of butter, corn syrup and glycerin, but a few of the commercial brands prefer to use palm oil, replacing the butter with it. Laffy Taffy and Airheads are two of these companies that don’t use butter.

You will not find taffy outside the US, at least not easy. While similar candy might exist in other candies, they will have names like Now and Later, Chewits or Starburst, and not taffy.

Airhead is a taffy variety that is very popular. You can make a nice trick with them that I’m going to explain here. You might’ve noticed that the Airhead taffy comes in a paper sleeve made out of cellophane. While it’s unopened, pinch the end of the cellophane sleeve, while you’re flapping the candy. Do the motion, up and down, and you will notice that the Airhead taffy gets smaller. It will continue to get smaller, and as it does this, you might want to move the hand on the wrapper, so a bit of tension is maintained between the candy and the fingers. If you continue to do this movement, in the end you will get a substance that looks like flour, all gathered inside the wrapper.

There are a number of different types of taffy available, like salt water taffy, apple taffy, Turkish taffy and a few others. Usually, home made taffy is used with different methods than commercially available varieties.

Is there salt water in saltwater taffy?

Actually, no. There is salt—and water—in saltwater taffy. But it isn’t made with ocean water, despite the fact that it’s so widely available at seaside vacation spots.

So how did saltwater taffy come to be? One story holds that a seaside candy store was flooded by a storm and the resulting saltwater-logged taffy was discovered to be delicious. However, this story is probably apocryphal.

Why do you pull taffy?

The final important step in making taffy is pulling it: Stretching it out and folding it in half, then stretching and folding again, over and over, until you may reach the point of exhaustion.

Good exercise—but what does it do for the candy? As it turns out, pulling taffy aerates it, or incorporates many tiny air bubbles throughout the candy. This makes it lighter and chewier.

Taffy isn’t the only candy out there that gets pulled this way. We saw molten lollipop pulled by a machine at a local lollipop factory. In this case, the air bubbles added by pulling were to make the candy less rock hard and more brittle.

Salt Water Taffy Recipe

Saltwater taffy is a candy and an upper-body workout all in one. To give it its light but chewy texture, you’ll be pulling it, and pulling it, and pulling it for up to 15 minutes.

Makes about 50 1-inch pieces.

• 2 cups sugar
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1 cup light corn syrup
• 2 teaspoons glycerin (optional)
• 3/4 cup water
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 to 1 teaspoon flavoring (such as vanilla, lemon, maple, or mint)
• 3 drops food coloring (optional)

• a large (3- to 4-quart) saucepan
• a wooden spoon
• a candy thermometer
• a pastry brush
• waxed paper or plastic wrap
• a marble slab or cookie sheet
• greased scissors or butter knife

What Do I Do?

1. Mix together sugar and cornstarch in the saucepan.

2. Use a wooden spoon to stir in the corn syrup, glycerin, water, butter, and salt. Place the saucepan over medium heat and stir until the sugar dissolves.

3. Continue stirring until mixture begins to boil, then let cook, undisturbed, until it reaches about 270° F or the soft-crack stage. Wash down the sides of the pan with a pastry brush dipped in warm water while the syrup cooks.
Remove the saucepan from the heat and add food coloring and flavoring. Stir gently, then pour onto a greased marble slab or into a shallow greased cookie sheet to cool.

4. When the taffy is cool enough to handle, grease your hands with oil or butter and pull the taffy until it's light in color and has a satiny gloss. You can have a friend help with this step, which should take about 10 minutes.

5. Roll the pulled taffy into a long rope, about 1/2 inch in diameter, and cut it with greased scissors or a butter knife into 1-inch-long pieces. Let the pieces sit for about half an hour before wrapping them in wax paper or plastic wrap and twisting the ends of the wrapper.



What Else Can I Try?

• Try leaving out the corn syrup and see what happens! When we tried this, we ended up with a crystallized candy with a melt-in-your-mouth texture very similar to after-dinner mints.

• Try not pulling some of the taffy—what is the texture of the resulting candy?

• Try adding 1/8 teaspoon of baking soda before pouring out the syrup. This will create many tiny bubbles that should result in a lighter, chewier texture.

• Try twisting together taffy ropes of different colors or flavors for fun new combinations.

Good To Know About TAFFY

Taffy is a type of chewy candy, similar to toffee. Taffy is often sold alongside bubblegum and candy. Taffy is made by stretching or pulling a sticky mass of boiled sugar, butter or vegetable oil, flavorings, and coloring until fluffy. When this process is complete, the taffy is rolled, cut into small pastel-coloured pieces and wrapped in wax paper to keep it soft. It usually has a fruity flavor, but other flavors are common as well, including molasses and the classic unflavored taffy.

Salt water taffy was a noted invention of Atlantic City, New Jersey, and became a common souvenir of many coastal resort towns. Modern commercial taffy is made primarily from corn syrup, glycerin and butter. The pulling process, which makes the candy lighter and chewier, consists of stretching out the mixture, folding it over and stretching it out again. Although it is called "salt water" taffy, it does not include any salt water in its manufacture at all. In the nearby Philadelphia regional dialect, the term "taffy" without "salt water" before it often refers to a lollypop or sucker[1].

In the United Kingdom, taffy candies are called chews. They are shaped pieces of candy very similar to soft toffee but without the caramel flavouring, and can be found in the form of popular brands such as Chewits or Starburst and Laffy Taffy.

Caramel candies are sometimes referred to as taffy (taffy apples), but are very different from common salt water taffy.

Flavors, Prices and Description of All Taffy

ASSORTED
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Assorted Taffy- $3.99 per 1/2 lbs.
Description:
A random mix of our delicious taffy.
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Classic Mix Taffy- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Cinnamon, licorice, vanilla, root beer, peppermint, and molasses soft, flavorful, and always fresh.
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Coastsides Favorites- $3.99 per 1/2 lbs.
Description:
Peanut butter, coffee choc cream, double caramel, and banana cream pie mix. soft, flavorful, and always fresh.
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Fruit Mix Taffy- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Green apple, banana, huckleberry, mango, grape, and pomegranate. soft, flavorful, and always fresh.
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Harbor Mix Taffy- $3.99 per 1/2 lbs.
Description:
Lemon meringue, caramel apple, cotton candy, and orange cream. soft, flavorful, and always fresh.
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Hot Spice Mix- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Cinnamon, peppermint, and Hot tomale soft, flavorful, and always fresh.
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Sour Assorted- $3.99 per 1/2 lbs.
Description:
Our original Sour Taffy is a mix of all your favorites like green apple, grape, cherry, orange, and lemon but with a little sour side.
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Sugar Free Assorted- $3.99 per 1/2 lbs.
Description:
For an alternative to sugar try our taffy lite sugar free mix which consists of coffee, vanilla, black licorice, blueberry, huckleberry, lemon meringue, and orange cream.
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Tropical assorted- $3.99 per 1/2 lbs.
Description:
Our Tropical Assorted consists of Mango, fruit punch, passion fruit, guava, coconut, pineapple, pina colada, and key lime.
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FRUIT

Banana- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Our Banana Taffy is soft, fresh, and always flavorful!
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Banana Cream Pie- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Banana Cream Pie is soft, chewy, and always flavorful!
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Berry Blast- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Our original Berry Blast is a of combination raspberry and blueberry.
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Caramel Apple- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Our Caramel Apple taffy is soft, fresh, and always flavorful!
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Cherry- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Our Cherry taffy is soft, fresh, and always flavorful!
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Golden Pear- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Find the juiciest and ripest pear and take a bite, and it still does not compare to our Golden Pear taffy!
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Grape- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Our Purple Grape will make your mouth water for more!
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Green apple- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Our Green Apple is tart and taste like Granny Apples!
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Huckleberry- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Taste a wild juicy fruit with our Huckleberry taffy!
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Lemon Lime- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Lemon Lime is a tart soft, chewy taffy that is full of flavor!
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Lemon Meringue- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
A personal favorite for Coastsiders Lemon Meringue is flavorful and always fresh.
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Orange Cream- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Tastes like orange cream Popsicles!
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Peach Smoothie- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
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Pink Lemonade- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Our original Pink Lemonade taffy is a real thirst quencher on a summer day!
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Pomegranate- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Our original Pomegranate taffy is soft, fresh, and always flavorful!
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Raspberry Lemonade- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Raspberry and Lemonade mixed into one piece of taffy!
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Strawberry- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Our Strawberry taffy is soft, fresh, and always flavorful!
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Tutti Frutti- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Our original Tutti Frutti is not only colorful, but full of flavor. Lemon, blueberry, raspberry, and apple all mixed in one piece of taffy!
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Watermelon- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Our watermelon taffy will leave your mouth watering!
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ANOTHER FLAVORS TAFFY

Buttered Popcorn- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Why eat popcorn when you could eat our Buttered Popcorn, while you watch you movie!
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Butterscotch- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Our original Butterscotch taffy is soft, fresh, and always flavorful!
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Caramel Cake- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Caramel cake is caramel mixed with a white frosting cake flavor!
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Chocolate- $3.99 per 1/2 lbs.
Description:
Our Chocolate taffy has a classic taste that all chocolate lovers will enjoy!
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Cinnamon- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Our Cinnamon Taffy is always soft, fresh, and flavorful!
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Coffee chocolate cream- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Our original Coffee Chocolate Cream is for coffee lovers and chocolate lovers a like!
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Cotton Candy- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Our Cotton Candy is soft, fresh, and always flavorful!
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Double Caramel- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Like Caramel? Then you will love our Caramel taffy!
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Hot Buttered Rum- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Our original Hot Buttered Rum is buttery and makes your mouth water.
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Hot Hot Tomale- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Our Hot Tomale is Hot Hot Hot! Taffy lovers beware.
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Licorice- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
A classic flavor our black Licorice is always soft, fresh, and flavorful!
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Malt Chocolate- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Remember tasting childhood homemade chocolate malt milkshakes, our taffy tastes the same!
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Mint Chocolate Chip- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Our original Mint Chocolate Chip Cookie is soft, fresh, and always flavorful!
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Molasses- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
One of the first taffy flavors ever made our Molasses taffy is always soft, fresh, and flavorful!
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Neoplolitan- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Neapolitan is a favorite for most because it mixes strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate all in one piece of taffy!
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Oreo Cookie- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Our original Oreo Cookie taffy is plain taffy with real crushed up Oreo pieces!
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Peanut Butter- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Our Peanut butter salt water taffy is made with real peanut butter in the center of every piece!
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Peppermint- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
A classic flavor our peppermint is always soft, fresh, and flavorful!
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Pumpkin Pie- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Half Moon Bay is know for pumpkins and Pumpkin Pie taffy it is delicious!
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Rocky Road- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Our original Rocky Road combines the marshmallow, chocolate, and cashew tastes all in one piece of taffy!
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Root Beer- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Like Root Beer? Root beer floats? Then you will love our Root Beer taffy!
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Sweet Bee Honey- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Our Bee Honey taffy is sweet and delicious!
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Vanilla- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Our Vanilla Taffy is soft, fresh, and always flavorful!
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Vanilla Latte- $1.99 per 1/4 lbs.
Description:
Our original Vanilla Latte has a creamy coffee flavor with a hint of vanilla!
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