Candy canes is easier to cook with than it looks. Here's how to choose, use, and store them, what to substitute, and 12 recipes to get you started.

What are candy canes?

Candy canes are the hooked, red-and-white peppermint sticks that turn up every December. They're hard-boiled sugar candy: cooked sugar and corn syrup pulled with peppermint oil and a red stripe, then bent into the J-shaped hook while still warm and pliable.

The flavor is bracing, cool peppermint with a clean sugar sweetness behind it. That mint is strong enough that a couple of crushed canes will perfume a whole batch of cookies or a quart of ice cream.

In the kitchen they earn their keep two ways. You can crush them into a crunchy, flecked ingredient for cookies and bark, or leave them whole to serve as stirrers and edible decoration.

Ways to Use Candy Canes

Crushing is the workhorse move. Drop unwrapped canes in a zip-top bag, press out the air, then hit them with a rolling pin or the flat of a meat mallet.

Stop while there's still some grit and small shards. Powder them and you lose the crunch that makes them fun.

Coarse crumbs go on top: pressed onto frosted Awesome Candy Cane Christmas Cookies, or scattered over Marbleized Mint Bark while the chocolate is still wet. A finer crush folds into batters and into the churned base for Candy Cane Ice Cream, where it streaks the mint through.

Whole canes are decoration and tools. Hook one over the rim of a mug of Peppermint Hot Cocoa as a stirrer and it slowly melts into the drink, adding mint as it goes.

To rim a glass or mug with peppermint, crush canes fine, spread the crumbs on a plate, wipe the rim with a little corn syrup or melted chocolate, and press it into the crumbs.

Pairing and Common Mistakes

Peppermint loves chocolate above all, which is why candy canes end up in bark, brownies, and cocoa. They also play well with vanilla and white chocolate. A peppermint stirrer in a mug of coffee is a quiet holiday upgrade.

The biggest mistake is crushing them too far ahead. Candy canes are pure sugar and pull moisture from the air fast, so crushed bits left out overnight clump into a sticky, weepy mess.

Crush them within an hour or two of using them, or keep the crumbs sealed tight until the last moment.

The second mistake is adding crushed candy to anything wet too early. Stirred into warm batter or a hot drink and left to sit, the shards dissolve and disappear. For visible crunch and color, add them at the very end or use them as a topping.

Watch them in the oven, too. Baked at any real heat for more than a few minutes, the sugar melts and can scorch, so candy-topped cookies do best with the canes added near the end of baking.

Substitutes

The closest swap is peppermint stick candy or starlight peppermint discs, the round pinwheel mints. They're the same hard peppermint candy without the hook, and they crush and behave identically; reach for them when candy canes are out of season.

For flavor only, a few drops of peppermint extract replace the mint taste, though you lose the crunch and the red flecks. Start with ⅛ to ¼ teaspoon and taste, since extract is far more concentrated than the candy.

Crushed hard peppermint or wintergreen candies of any shape work as a topping. In a true pinch, any clear hard candy crushed for crunch will do, though the peppermint character is the whole point here.

Buying and Storing

Candy canes are a seasonal item, stacked in boxes from late November through the holidays and often clearanced cheap right after. They run from pencil-thin minis up to oversized novelty canes, and come in the classic peppermint stripe plus fruit flavors and bright colors.

For cooking, plain peppermint canes are what you want. The fruit-flavored and intensely dyed ones can bleed odd colors into pale frostings and ice cream.

Stored sealed in a cool, dry spot, hard candy lasts a remarkably long time, well over a year, since there's almost no moisture in it to spoil. The enemy is humidity, not age.

Keep them in their wrappers until you need them, and reseal any crushed leftovers airtight right away. Unwrapped or loosely stored canes turn tacky and cloudy as they absorb moisture, and stripes can bleed pink onto whatever they touch.

Quick facts

In Chinese

糖果手杖

British (UK) term

Candy canes

en français

cannes de bonbon

en español

bastones de caramelo

Recipes using candy canes

There are 12 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 12 recipes