Last week, I attempted something I always believed was impossible: I made Double Divinity by myself.  This may not seem like much, but for me, it was quite the herculean feat, if only as a mental block to overcome.

To compress some history, I learned everything I know about candy making from my parents, and from them I got two divinity recipes.  My father’s Double Divinity recipe is something of a family secret and contains one apocryphal item on the materials list: two people.  Having never seen anyone making double divinity by themselves (for obvious reasons), and also seeing my father struggle to stir cooling hard candy (before passing it off to someone else to stir) didn’t make me doubt this truth.

Still, I wanted to make some divinity for my team at work and my friends at the shop, so there was no time to wrangle a second person.  Since I already had the ingredients out (I was making other candy earlier in the evening,) I decided I would give it a shot; I figured, if I prepped everything, and set up the conditions just right, I might at least have a chance, even with one person.  Also, in the worst case, I would just have somewhat denser sugar, water, and corn syrup (and probably a mess;) all of things were acceptable losses.

So, after all that, I managed to successfully make a batch of Double Divinity by myself.  There were definitely some logistic challenges (how do you stir something on the stove and beat something else at the same time?), agility challenges (how do you hold a bowl, pour in hot hard candy, and stir with a wooden spoon at the same time?) as well as endurance challenges (stir the hard candy mix until no longer glossy takes how long?) but I managed to figure it out.  That’s not to say I wasn’t sore afterward, or that it was ideal, but, it was possible.

In the end, though, I think I’ll plan better and see about getting a partner to help next time.