This morning, I took a pretty nasty fall. If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I’ve been dealing with a particularly stubborn hip injury. Long story short, I spent the day first in extreme pain, then high as a kite on Codeine.

Why am I telling you this? Well, it had a big part in inspiring today’s recipe! They say “In Vino veritas” (In wine, truth). Yeah, well… In Codeine, Inspiration!

As you may or may not know, my husband has been enthusiastically enjoying his newest hobby, homebrewing. He got right into it this year, going so far as to grow his own hops! He loves his beer like he loves his chocolate – bitter as all hell, with intense flavor. I decided to use his home grown hops to flavor chocolate. Check out our blog tomorrow or Thursday for our Hop Truffles recipe! By the time he got home from work, I had started making a second idea that sort of mutated off the idea of Hop truffles. You see, our Jalapeno Beer Brittle is proving to be an insanely popular recipe from our recently released cookbook, “The Spirited Baker: Intoxicating Desserts & Potent Potables“. What if I bastardized that recipe, added hops to flavor it even more, and made lollipops out of it? LolliHOPS!!

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Well, I made, I saw, I conquered – and my husband is a very, very happy man! These were incredibly easy to make, anyone can make them at home!

Hop Flavored Beer Lollipops recipe – LolliHOPS!

Small amount of butter
1/2 cup beer of choice (We used an IPA)
6 dried hop cones (we used Centennial)*
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
Lollipop sticks

Use butter to generously grease the back of 1 or 2 baking sheets, set aside.

Heat beer to a light simmer. Break up hop cones into leaves, add to warm beer. Remove from heat, allow to simmer for about 10 minutes.

Strain beer into a measuring glass, measuring only 1/3 cup. (The 1/2 cup measurement is to allow for some evaporation / hop leaf absorption). In a heavy saucepan (2 quart), mix together sugar, corn syrup, and strained 1/3 cup of beer.

Bring to boil over medium-high heat, then attach candy thermometer to saucepan. Stir often until temperature reaches 300 degrees F (150 degrees Celcius). KEEP A VERY CLOSE EYE ON IT after about 280 degrees, as the temp has a tendancy to race up at that point. If you turn your back, you could burn it!

At 300 degrees, remove the pan from heat. Allow to cool & thicken slightly, stirring constantly – about 1 minute.

Working quickly, drop small amounts of the hot sugar mixture onto the greased baking sheets – about 1-3 tsp(s) per, depending on the desired size of your lollihops. Lay a lollipop stick into each circle, so that the tip is near the center of the lollipop, and flat against the surface. (ie, you want it parallel to the baking sheet, not perpendicular to it!). Carefully give each stick a bit of a twirl, so that the candy coats around the stick to hold it in place.

Cool completely, carefully remove from baking sheets. Wrap with plastic, waxed paper, parchment paper, or whatever. Enjoy!

* Hops can vary wildly in size and flavor. Be sure to taste as you go – you may not want to use the whole 10 minute steeping time. If you don’t have access to whole dried hope cones, you can use 1/4 tsp – 1/2 tsp of hop pellets! It doesn’t take much, so your next batch of homebrew won’t miss it!

Tags: beer, Candy, hop lollipops, hops, lollihops, recipe, The Spirited Baker

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Adults Only! (Boozy), Candy, Home Brewing, Recipes, Spirited Baking, Spirited Living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.