Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Playing with Sugar

A few days ago the weather was dark, rainy and gloomy. And, I needed a diversion quickly. I didn't want to play outside, so I decided to play inside. My playmate was sugar. I recently pick up a sugar cookbook and wanted to try a few techniques out. First game, cotton candy.

Homemade cotton candy is very different from carnival cotton candy. It is much harder. It has a certain crunch to it. The whole process is part of the hard-crack sugar stage, which is used in many desserts.

It took about 25 minutes to get the sugar mixture up to 320 degrees (hard-crack stage). I quickly worked with the sugar and began to whisk to back and forth on to parchment paper creating strands of spun sugar. After I rolled the spun sugar into balls. The whole process is done quickly because the sugar hardens fast.

Personally, I did not care for the taste of homemade cotton candy. I did learn a lot and now I am ready to make my first croquembouche. Plus, I forgot about the weather for awhile.


December 7th is National Cotton Candy Day

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