Cough Drop Fail

Saturday evening, due to being filled with a chicken dinner fundraiser, was a very full one. But I was inspired upon coming home to try and make some herbal cough drops--two of the girls helping at the dinner had a horrendous cold complete with a terrible sore throat, and I had a recipe...and who wouldn't want to make cough drops? XD

I found the recipe on Instructables.com, and tried to follow it faithfully. The herbal blend was ginger root and lemon balm (it made a very nice tea--lemony and a little warm and spicy for the aftertaste), made into about 2 cups of tea. So things were going good...the sugar and tea came to a boil and started heating up...it looked like it was coming along nicely...

The recipe called for a temperature of 300 degrees (the hard crack stage) before pouring the syrup into molds. But it hit 260, and went from a syrup to bone-dry granulated sugar within about 40 seconds. Observe:

I apologize for the graininess of the image--it was taken with a webcam at 10:45 PM.

But see what I mean? It was like rock candy! Hardly the cute little lozenges I was expecting. But I think I know what went wrong.

~The sugar to tea ratio was 1:1 instead of 2:1 (as it would be in a normal hard candy recipe)

~Since the ratio was less, it probably needed to only go to the hard ball stage (250-265F)

~The thermometer may have been (most likely was) inaccurate

Next time I'll make the necessary adjustments and try again, carefully. In the meantime the sugar has been used to sweeten tea and made into sugar scrub. Yes, I can be thrifty and a recycler too, thank you very much. :p