Sponge Candy

Grandmother Johnnie taught me how to make homemade candy when I was young. Every year thereafter, she and I would make candy at Christmas time. Once she got in ill health, it was up to me to make it. So, one year, my husband and I went over to my mother’s house to make a new candy recipe. The new recipe was called Sponge Candy. The recipe sounded pretty much like peanut brittle, but without the peanuts. I knew I would like it because I objected to the peanuts in the brittle anyway.

My husband, my Mom and Dad were watching TV in the den just off of the kitchen. They were within easy earshot.

I mixed up the ingredients in a heavy saucepan on the stove and cooked them to the right stage. The last step was to add baking soda (which is exactly what I do when making peanut brittle). The soda makes the sugar combination bubble up and makes little air holes in the brittle.

I expected the same from this recipe. I had prepared the jelly roll pan (notice that is singular) to pour the Sponge Candy in when it was ready.

I slowly added the soda and stirred it in. The candy began to quickly expand. I poured as much as I could fit into the prepared pan, but it continued to grow and grow and grow. I called out to my husband to grab another pan for me. He came running and quickly got another pan. I poured more into it, but the mixture still kept growing. We then called out for Mom to get another pan ready. She did---—four more times. We kind of felt like we were in an “I Love Lucy” episode. That recipe for one pan of Sponge Candy actually filled up six large baking pans.

It set up real well and was crunchy just like it was supposed to be. It did resemble a sponge, hence the name. I don’t know whether the soda was super-duper or whether the candy was just supposed to turn out that way, but we didn’t envision that much of it. It was tasty and my Dad loved it. He ate for days from that one batch.