Lemon drops

Lemon drops are citrusy hard candies with fizzy centers, that are surprisingly easy to make at home!

this recipe

Honestly, I don’t have the best track record when it comes to sugar work. BUT, I managed to create a recipe for lemon drops that works for me, so I am confident that you can manage too. The thing with sugar work is that you need to be patient, well-prepared and pay very close attention to your pan of melting sugar. Everything can change in seconds and your thermometer is your next best friend.

Jump to:

• 💭 Tips
• 📋 Step-by-step
• Fizzy powder
• Silicone mold
• Prevent melting
• Sherbet lemon

💭 Tips

I would advise reading the recipe a couple of times to make sure that you understand all the steps and are ready to act quickly. Once you’ve gotten the hang of the process you’ll realize it’s actually pretty simple.

You should prepare all your ingredients beforehand to avoid panicking or burning the sugar. You will definitely need a candy thermometer or an instant-read thermometer to know precisely when to take off the pan from the heat. If you let the sugar on too long and it becomes brown instead of white, there is no way you can salvage it. It means the sugar has burnt and your candies will be bitter. You will have to start over with a clean pan.

This is a recipe for lemon drops but technically you could flavor these hard candies however you want. You can use any flavor extract/food coloring and the pairings are endless.

Fizzy powder

The idea for the fizzy powder comes from this blog. It doesn’t create an explosion of bubbles in your mouth but you can still feel a slight fizziness of your tongue. If you want to achieve maximum fizziness do not bite into the lemon drops, let them slowly melt in your mouth until you reach the center. I have tried adding more fizzy powder to see if it would increase the fizziness level, but by adding more powder you also add more bitterness so to me it wasn’t worth it. But if you like your lemon drops on the bitter side, be my guest, add as much powder as you can handle.

Silicone mold

I encourage you to use oiled silicone molds because it is so easy to get the candies out of the molds. You can use any shape but remember that the deeper the molds are the bigger your candies will turn out to be if you fill them completely. And it is not that enjoyable to suck on candies the size of unshelled walnuts.

Prevent melting

Unfortunately, lemon drops can melt over time, which means they can get stuck together. When it comes to hard candies, humidity is your worst enemy. So, to preserve your candies for a longer time don’t skip the last step. Coating the lemon drops with powdered sugar and cornstarch helps for a time but nothing beats individually wrapping them with cellophane paper/wax paper. This way the candies can’t get stuck together in the jar.

Sherbet lemon

In my French edition of the book, Dumbledore is offering lemon ice cream to Professor McGonagall. When I read the passage in English for the first time I didn’t notice anything unusual. After all, it was written a sherbet lemon and sherbet is a type of ice cream. But then I realized that if it was a lemon sherbet then it would be written lemon sherbet, not sherbet lemon.

So I turned to Google and imagine my surprise when I discovered that sherbet lemons are in fact hard candies, commonly called lemon drops. When I told my sister about the lemon drops she wasn’t surprised at all, actually. She asked me how I thought that Dumbledore could keep ice cream intact in his pocket. I mean, he was having a discussion with someone who can turn into a cat so that never seemed too far-fetched to me.