Needing to make lollipops without corn syrup or cream of tartar

I made some lollipops for a friend's child who was allergic to corn, using honey and sugar. My recipe calls for 1 cup of sugar, 1/3 cup honey, and 3 tablespoons of water. You mix those in a pan, stirring just until the sugar is dissolved. Wash down the sides of the pan with a wet pastry brush, and bring to a boil. Boil until it reaches 295F, hard crack stage. At that point, remove from the heat and add in your flavorings. Pour into the molds and let cool to harden. In your case, I'm not sure if your already prepared flavoring syrup would work, or if it would upset the balance of things. If that is off, the lollipops wouldn't set up hard. Without getting too in depth, you need to change the molecular arrangement of the sugars to create an invert sugar. It is so easy to upset this, and get crystal formation that is gritty as opposed to clear and smooth as glass. Corn syrup and acid- usually in the form of cream of tartar, help avoid this. A combination of granulated sugar is necessary in combination with the honey, because of the different sorts of sugars each is made of ( sucrose, glucose, fructose, and minor impurities like bee spit in the honey) Truthfully, unless there is an allergy which precludes the use of corn syrup, it is much simpler to make hard candy with it and more likely to succeed. If you really feel strongly about not using it, then reconsider using the cream of tartar. That is a natural product of wine making, not an artificial creation from some laboratory. You could also use citric acid, in granulated form, but I'm not sure of the measures for that. As far as how and when to stir, any time you are making candy, you stop stirring the pot as soon as your sugar is dissolved to avoid encouraging the formation of large crystals. To get hard candy, and have it translucent as glass, you want very small crystals. It needs to cool rapidly, as well. You can add dry spices to the mixture while it cooks, to infuse the syrup, and you could probably substitute the syrup mixture you have now for the water component to start. If the sugar won't dissolve, you could then add in just enough water to get that going. Excess water will cook off in the boiling process, so it shouldn't hurt anything. Good luck. At least experiments and failures would still be edible and useful- in making a tisane, or adding to regular tea, even if they don't harden into drops.