My mom used to make red-hot cinnamon suckers for our birthdays.  She made one for each person in our class at school.  Keep in mind, this was in the 60’s and 70″s when no one cared that your treats were homemade.  Someone’s mom could have been making birthday cookies in a latrine with ten cats.   We wouldn’t have cared.  We lived through that and pounds of raw cookie dough.

Anyway, she made them the old-fashioned way with corn syrup…the high fructose kind, and sugar and cinnamon flavoring.  I remember watching her stir the boiling syrup.  She tested it continually, pouring a bit of it into a glass of cold water until it cracked just right.  When they were ready, she poured them into circles on wax paper.  That’s devotion.  Now, I’ve done it, really.   I have molds and flavorings and everything.  But that was BEFORE.

Now there is such a fun, delicious, cool, and easy way to make a sucker.  A rainbow sucker for St Patrick’s day.

What you need:

• Jolly Rancher candies
• Large and small sucker sticks (cake decorating isle in Wal-Mart or a craft store)
• Parchment paper

Heat the oven to 350 degrees.  Unwrap 15 to 20 Jolly Rancher candies.

Arrange the candies on a parchment lined, heavy cookie sheet.  Make sure you leave enough room between suckers to put the stick on later.   They can be as tall as you like but three to five is best.  You can line them up side by side as well for a fatter sucker.  After you have arranged the flavors you like, carefully place them in the oven.  Cook them for 5 to 51/2 minutes.  Take the candy out.  They are HOT.  Wait 30 seconds or so and push a sucker stick into the sucker and twist it to coat the stick and secure it.  That’s it.  So easy and fun to do.  Make some.  You’ll have a jolly time.

*If your suckers have lost shape in the oven, spray a butter knife with Pam and  reshape them bit.