daekkyn

A few days ago, I wanted to make some molded sugar, I therefore heated sugar, water and glucose to ~160°C (320°F) but some bubbles where present which I did not want in the casting. I decided to make use of my chamber vacuum sealer to degas the sirup. It did not turned out as planed however it did turn out quite fun: This is the result right after going out of the vacuum chamber. All the bubbles expanded as expected, but instead of bursting, they cooled and solidified which created this extremly fragile, alien looking sugar construction. The smell and taste was the one of cotton candy, the texture was lighter than cotton candy. Encouraged by this discovery, I tried to get more samples. I reheated the sugar until I got a thick liquid and stirred to manually introduce more bubbles. Poured some into a metalic lid, placed it in the chamber and pulled the vacuum: I had to try multiple times to get the above results. Here are some observations: The temperature of the sirup is very important: if it's too hot, the bubbles will expand and burst, leaving you with no bubbles, if it is too cold, the bubbles won't expand.I guess there is an optimal temperature the sugar needs to have at the moment the vacuum is pulled to maximize the bubbles volume.It is important not to restore the pressure before the bubbles have cooled or they won't be strong enough to resist the pressure and will collapse. 30 secs should be enough.Glucose might not be essential.The result is very sensitive to humidity (see following photo). Using isomalt instead of sucrose might help.You probably need to reach the hard crack stage for the sugar to be hard enough (160°C ,320°F).The bubbles are very fragile, it is difficult to detach them from the base without breaking them.If the humidity is too high, the bubbles slowly melt and leave a hairy looking sculpture: A (slightly boring) video of the vacuum stage: If anyone feels like experimenting with this techique, I'd love to see the results.

Another common recipe from Brazil using tapioca flour (polvilho in portugese): They usually just call it tapioca, it is a pancake made from tapioca and water which is filled with wathever you like (cheese, jam, Nutella, etc...) The recipe is quite simple, you just need to get the right amount of water in (I don't know the exact ratio of water to flour): - Take some tapioca flour and add just enough water to have a uniform paste. - Put a bit of paste in a fine sieve above a small non stick pan. Push the paste through the sieve until you achieve the wanted pancake thickness. - Heat the pan until the bottom of the pancake is slightly brown - Fill with whit whatever you like and close in half You might find more information here: http://eatrio.net/2013/01/brazilian-tapioca.html

It is indeed less sweet, but I doubt that the result would solidify if one used only corn syrup.

Anyone heard of dragon's beard candy? Well it is a traditional china hand-pulled candy which looks like spun sugar, but made very differently. The technique is similar to noodle making, you start with a torus, you expand it, double it, expand, double, etc... the number of strands increases exponentially in powers of 2 (I'm a computer scientist, I love powers of 2) and can go up to 16384. I've discovered this candy on Dave Arnold's blog where you can find a detailed video of the recipe. I tried the recipe a few times and I think it is very fun to do. The first times were highly unsuccessful, but you quickly get better. I followed the recipe of Dave Arnold's (more or less), it was impossible to find corn syrup in Switzerland, I therefore replaced it with glucose syrup which has the same property of preventing crystallization.The temperature 133°C (271°F) is extremely important, if you overshoot, the candy puck will be rock hard. As I was doing small quantities (100g of sugar) and I only have a medium size pan, it was a nightmare to stick my thermometer sufficiently deep in the sugar. I used silicon molds to shape the puck, here are some results: Transferring the molten sugar to the molds: The cooled puck: Forming the stands (I never manage to create equal sized stands, there are always some thicker strands): As I don't like peanuts, I replaced the filling with chocolate: I personally did not like the taste of them, faaaar to sweet, but my 9 year old sister loved them. Maybe I should try with chocolat powder instead of cornstarch for a better taste. And the replacement of the peanuts with chocolate probably was not a good idea in terms of decreasing sweetness. Another idea is to use the stands as decoration for other thing (e.g. a cake). I highly encourage you to try, they are very cheap to do and very fun. If you have questions or suggestions, please post them.