Dutch Cinnamon Dusted Liquorice

Black Liquorice - or “drop” as the Dutch call it - is the candy equivalent of crack cocain in the Netherlands.
On average the Dutch eat 2 kilo’s per head each year of this black salty / sweet stuff (!), leading the pack of
drop affecionado countries around the North Sea.
Drop is surely an acquired taste, and it is said anyone living west of Frankfurt (Germany) will gladly eat it,
and to the east people just spit it out. But don’t worry: this classic cinnamon dusted drop is easy on the tongue.
This is a great introduction to drop for all candy adventurists out there.

Try it - 16 million Dutch can't be wrong!

Materials
Brush
Corn Starch, for molds
Pans
Rubber stamp (non-inked!) or small figurine as the mold positive
Spatula
Strainer
Tea-spoon

Ingredients for 100 grams of candy
320 ml Water
  50 g Liquorice-root slivers or shavings (Glycyrrhiza glabra)
  20 g Brown Sugar
    6 g Wheat-flour, Corn flour or Potato flour
    4 g Salmiac (Ammonium Chloride NH4Cl)
    4 g Gelatin powder, or 2 sheets
 0,2 g Activated carbon (eg. Norit™)
           Cinnamon, powdered

Step 1 Preparing Molds & Skipping the Hard Part

Preperation
You can keep it simple, as I did, and fill a pie-tin with a thick layer of Corn Starch, compressing it with a roller and
punching a rubber stamp into the starch to form molds.
Or, if you want to get all production-line fancy pantsy, follow Sandds’ very effective “Corn Starch Candy Molds ” Instructable.
(Great job, Sandds!)

If you want to skip these preperations and step 10, consider using flexible ice-cube molds.
The results will look quite professional.

Step 1
To skip Steps 2, 3 and 4, you can weigh 3 grams of Laurel Liquorice pieces into 100 ml of water. Don’t be ashamed of using these “blokdrop” pallets. Nobody in the industry is ;-) They’ll save you lots of time and work.

Or skip this step and follow Steps 2, 3 and 4 instead.

[NB. Laurel Liquorice doesn’t contain any laurel these days. Blocks of blokdrop (litt. “block liquorice”) used to be
packaged with laurel leaves in between, to keep them from sticking together. The aromatic taste of laurel was
considered a bonus. Today “blokdrop” and “laurel liquorice” are actually synonymous, the blocks are packed
in paper or plastic.]