What Is Candy and How Can I Use It?

Peppermint stick candy is the hard, red-and-white striped mint you know from the holidays. Candy canes, the straight sticks sold in jars, and the round starlight mints in cellophane are all the same thing in different shapes: a boiled sugar candy flavored with peppermint oil and streaked with red.

In baking it lives a double life. Whole, it works as a stirrer or a garnish. Crushed, it becomes a crunchy, cooling topping that scatters over frosting and bark.

The flavor is sharp and clean. A little goes a long way.

Chocolate mints are the small, flat candies that pair a layer of cool mint with chocolate, the after-dinner sweet you find on a restaurant pillow or unwrap with the check. In baking they double as a shortcut for adding both flavors at once.

A few familiar forms exist. Andes Cremes are thin three-layer rectangles of chocolate and green mint. Thin chocolate mint wafers, like the foil-wrapped After Eight style, are crisp chocolate around a soft mint fondant.

Both melt smoothly and carry the same chocolate-and-peppermint pairing. The appeal in the kitchen is that the candy already balances the two flavors for you, so you do not have to dial in mint extract by the drop.