Walking down memory lane is a great thing to look back at the old times. Especially, childhood memories are the sweetest things to be remembered. The laughing, crying, and playing moments are the things that cannot be forgotten ever. There is one more thing which has no intention to leave from your memory and that is cotton candy. The clouds of pure sugar with different colors made of sugar, corn syrup, and food coloring most often made you even your parents to stand in a queue out of a stall at a carnival or circus. Even in this stage of your life, I bet you still cannot deny the attraction of it.
Beginning
Preparing Cotton Candy Without Using A Machine
To make cotton candy at your home with customized color and flavor of your choice without using a machine you need to arrange some important things as ingredients. Let’s follow.
Ingredients
- 5 cups of granulated sugar.
- 1 1/3 cup of corn syrup.
- 1 cup of water.
- 1 tablespoon of fruit-flavored extracts (raspberry, vanilla, orange, etc.).
- Few drops of food coloring paste or liquid (pink or blue).
- ¼ teaspoon of salt.
- A pair of wire cutters and an old inexpensive whisk.
Directions
- Before starting the preparation, you have to cut the round ends of the whisk with the wire cutter and bend each of them to form a line of metal.
- Place a large saucepan on the medium heated oven.
- Put sugar, corn syrup, water, and salt together into the pan.
- Stir the mixture until the sugar starts melting.
- Heat the mixture to 320°F.
- Take a damp pastry brush and wipe the inner wall of the pan. This prevents the forming of sugar crystals.
- Now take a container and pour the hot mixture into it. The container should be heat resistant so that the heat could be maintained until the mixture comes in use.
- Add the fruit-flavored extracts with the mixture and the food coloring. After that stir the whole mixture so that all the things could get well mixed.
- Make an arrangement to receive the flying sugar bits that come out of the saucepan. Laying parchment paper around the saucepan perhaps the best idea for this purpose.
- Now dip the whisk into the mixture and keep there for some moments.
- After that, hold the whisk over the saucepan to let the sugar drip back into the mixture.
- Now when you hold the whisk over the parchment paper and spin it forward and reverse simultaneously you will find a nest of spun sugar is creating and what a satisfaction you’ll get to see that.
- Take lollipop sticks and wrap the candy around the sticks and in this way, your fluffy cotton candy is prepared for you.
- Enjoy the evenings with this delicious cotton candy along with your friends and turn your home into a carnival.
Preparing Cotton Candy Using A Machine
Cotton candy is not always being prepared for your children to entertain them. Sometimes you need a large amount of candy as you have arranged a party at your place and you have to provide this lucrative sweet dish to almost everyone. Therefore, you have to install a machine that can make your job much easier and supplies a huge number of cotton candy in a short time. Let’s see how it works.
Ingredients
As far as the ingredients concern, in both cases, you need almost the same kind of things to prepare cotton candy. Especially, you should take pure sugar for this purpose. The mixture that you have prepared in the previous case will be used here as a pre-mix that you have to add in the spinning machine.
Directions
- Before starting the preparation you need to clean the machine as there may be any leftover residue that can damage the quality of the candy.
- Now put together all the components to assemble the machine. It is an easy thing to do and you have to fix the bowl to the base of the machine only.
- After that, connect the machine to power and warm it up. You have to warm it up for 5 minutes if you want to prepare hard candy. While it’ll take 10 minutes floss sugar.
- Take the measuring cup that comes along with the machine and put 2 scoops of sugar and a few drops of food coloring and mix them well.
- Add the mixture to the spinning head of the cotton candy machine and let it spin. During this don’t put your hand or any other objects close to the spinning head.
- Turn the motor switch and generate some more heat. It will form a cotton-like character quickly.
- The moment when cotton starts forming, reduce the heat to allow more cotton to produce.
- Use lollipop sticks or paper cones to collect the cotton candy and serve them one after another to those who are waiting for their turn to have one.
- Repeat the process by adding more mixture to the head of the machine.
- Once the job has done, turn off the machine and remove all the components and wash them with warm soapy water using a sponge.
- Finally, wipe them with a dry cotton cloth to make them moisture-free to keep the machine away from stain. This kind of maintenance extends the life of the machine.
Conclusion
These two aforesaid processes help you to prepare cotton candy at your home quite conveniently. So now you have a good chance to get back to the childhood days once again along with the kids of your house holding a cotton candy in your hand. Try to make it with different tastes and flavors and enjoy having them.
John DiBella is a graduate of The Culinary Institute of America, a cooking enthuthiast and a writer. When he’s not writing blogs about home kitchenware, he enjoys hiking, camping, sailing and cooking.