DIY Candy Cross Lollipops

I was really excited this week, to see a post on Catholic Icing, that used Jolly Ranchers to make your own cross (or flower) lollipops. You can see her original post here.

Laura and I decided to see if it really worked. It DID!

The Jolly Ranchers melted great. I might not center the "cross arms" directly in the middle of the center candy next time, but otherwise, in less than an hour, we had made 13 lollipops.

The original idea used Jolly Ranchers and Life Savers to make flowers - that's a future Saturday project!

Supplies: (Everything was available for purchase today at Walmart.)

Regular Jolly Rancher Candy
(The bag I purchased had green apple, blue raspberry, cheery, watermelon and grape. We had enough to make 11 full lollipops with the "five color" color scheme, and two "odds and ends" lollipops.)

Lollipop Sticks(Walmart sold them in packs of 25. You can also use wooden kitchen skewers.)

Aluminum Foil
(You'll use this to line the baking pan.)

Cheap Sandwich Bags
(Get the kind that "fold" close. - No ziplock closings.)

Ribbon
(I bought purple, so it would be a "color" of the season.)

A Cookie Sheet (or two)
(The bigger the sheet, the more you can do at once. The sheet we used comfortably made four at one time.)

Instructions:1) Preheat the oven to 225 degrees & line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil. Make sure it's "shiny" side up.
3) Sort your Jolly Ranchers by color. You'll need five candies per lollipop.

4) Unwrap your candies. Put the "middle" of your cross on the cookie sheet. Make sure you space them out enough so that you can build the rest of the cross AND leave room for the stick.

5) Put the pan with the middles into the oven to give it a little bit extra "melting" time. I initially put it in for 1 minute, but it ended up needing 2 minutes for it to get "melty and sticky" so the rest of the pieces will stick to it for the remaining steps.

6) Remove your pan from the oven (this is probably not a "kid friendly" step). Arrange the rest of the jolly ranchers around the middle one in a cross shape. I kind of "pushed" them into the sticky middle, to make sure everything "blended" well. (Again, next time I'll probably build the "center" a wee bit higher so it looks more like a cross and less like a "t".)

You can have a "random" pattern, or make them all the same. For our lollipops, we did green apple (top), blue raspberry (middle), cherry and watermelon (center) and grape (bottom).

Note: It really works better if you have everything unwrapped BEFORE you start the melting process. You have a bit of time to "squish" them together, but it worked best if I had everything ready for when the middles came out of the oven.

7) Place your cookie sheet back in the oven. The original idea/post said to heat for 5 minutes. It took 7 minutes for the Jolly Ranchers to melt together - and be pliable enough to insert the lollipop stick.

8) Lay the stick on the top of the candies and push down. I kind of shaped the candy around the stick. Because it was  so long, I went ahead and put it down most of the middle - so it would have extra stability. The original idea only called for the stick to be placed from the middle piece down.

9) Allow the candy to cool. When it's hard, you'll be able to lift it off the foil with ease.

10) Use the sandwich bags to "wrap" the candies. Tie it closed with ribbon. I used purple, because it is a color represented in Lent/Easter.

Enjoy!

I'm probably going to use these as fun treats for the tween Bible study. It would also make a great gift for teachers and/or volunteers.

Now ... we just want to figure out how to make a lollipop using hard candies and Nerds.....or maybe Skittles.... hum... hum...hum...