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Cotton candy is a snack that is loved by both adults and children. Every time at a birthday party or a fair, everybody is usually looking forward to getting themselves cotton candy. It may be how cotton candy sticks on your lips or the way you feel the sugar run through your body that makes people love it.
Imagine if you could have cotton candy anytime you wanted and with readily available ingredients and tools? Good news! This article shows you how to make cotton candy in seven easy steps in the comfort of your home without a machine, or check our guide about Cotton Candy Machines and make things easier
Step One: Get and Combine All Ingredients
It is important to have all your ingredients and tools set out before you begin to avoid leaving your work halfway to look for a missed ingredient or tool. To make the fluffiest and sweetest cotton candy at home, you need the following ingredients and tools.
- Four cups full or 800 grams of granulated sugar
- One cup or 40 ml of corn syrup
- A quarter teaspoon or 1.5 grams of salt
- I cup or 40 ml of water
- One teaspoon or 5 ml Raspberry extract. You can use any other extract of your choice
- Two drops of pink food color. You can use any other food color of your preference
- A saucepan
- Parchment paper
- Whisk
Once you have gathered all the ingredients, mix the sugar, water, corn syrup, and salt in the pan. Place them on middle-temperature heat stir occasionally until all your sugar melts. To prevent the formation of sugar crystals, you can wipe the sides of your pan using a pastry brush.
Step 2: Heat Your Mixture
Heating your mixture is probably the trickiest step of making your cotton candy, and you have to be very keen. Ensure that you do not over stir, undercook or overcook the mixture as that will give the wrong consistency. It may even prevent the cotton candy from being fluffy at the end of the process.
Once you have your sugar, salt, and corn syrup mixture ready, place your thermometer on the saucepan and set the mixture on fire again.
Heat the mixture as you occasionally stir it until it reaches a temperature of 320 degrees Fahrenheit or 160 degrees Celsius. Once you have attained that temperature, pour your mixture into a shallow heatproof container.
The heatproof container stops the sugar from further burning and cooking. Add your raspberry extract and pink food color into the mixture. Stir continuously until the food color evenly spreads around the whole sugar syrup.
You can also choose any other extract and food color of your choice. It is all about your taste and preference.
Step 3: Set Up Your Work Station
To make sure that your workstation is ready for you to work in, spread parchment paper over the surface. That will make it look neat and easier to work in.
To prevent making a mess with the hot and sticky sugar, you might want to place a newspaper under the parchment paper.
For this step, you can substitute the parchment paper with spatulas. With the spatulas, you need to place them on a table such that the wide part protrudes from the table surface. Support them by placing a heavy object on the other end, spraying them with Pam or any other oil.
Step 4: Spin Your Sugar
After you have poured your sugar mixture into the heatproof container, it is now time to spin the sugar mixture. It will be better if you work with a snipped whisk. So first, make sure you snip the end of your whisk for the best results.
Dip your whisk into the mixture and hold it over the pot to let the excess syrup drip back into the container.
Now hold your whisk around a foot or thirty centimeters over the parchment paper and move it back and forth. That will cause thin strands of the sugar syrup to form on the parchment paper. Keep doing that until you have your desired ‘nest’ of cotton candy strands.
In this step, you have to move quickly to avoid messing your cotton candy up. The sugar strands on the parchment paper will begin to get fluffy after about ten minutes of dripping them from your whisk.
When you wave your whisk back and forth, the sugar syrup falls off the whisk, and air mixes with the mixture, and that is what causes the mixture to be fluffy. If you want your cotton candy to be fluffier, then you have to wave your whisk harder.
However, if the syrup has not achieved the right consistency, you can microwave it.
Step 5: Roll the Cotton Candy on Lollipop Sticks
Roll each of your sugar syrup strands on either lollipop stick. Depending on how thick you want your cotton candy, roll it on either lollipop sticks or straws. Straws are longer and, therefore, will hold more cotton candy. Ensure that you do that before the sugar becomes very brittle.
Step 6: Serve and Enjoy
Now that you have achieved your desired size and color of cotton candy, it is time to finally sit back and enjoy as you satisfy your cotton candy craving! You can store the extra cotton candies in an airtight container to keep the moisture out.
That will keep them looking fresh and good for you to enjoy at a later time. Do not store the cotton candies in the refrigerator as they will become hard and will lose the very much desirable fluffiness.
There are other ways to serve your cotton candy other than lollipop sticks. You can choose to serve it on ice cream cones instead of the lollipop sticks or straws.
Another way to serve cotton candy is on ice cream. You can decide to be a little creative and place your cotton candy on ice cream or even other types of desserts. You can also eat the candy by hand. All these depend on the recipe or method that you used when making the cotton candy.
The bottom line is that no matter how you serve or eat it, cotton candy will still have the same sweet, satisfying fluff and sweetness, and it will surely take away your craving.
Step 7: Clean Your Work Station
It is important to leave your workstation as clean as it was or even better to avoid dealing with ants. Make sure that you soak all of the tools used in this recipe in hot water. Hot water works best in removing all the sugar syrup that might have dried up on the surfaces of your tools.
Now that you have learned the seven simple steps of making cotton candy at home, you do not always have to wait for special occasions to treat yourself or your kids with cotton candy.
You can also find other methods to make candy like the handpicked cotton candy made using your hands only. Having the ability to enjoy a good fluffy cotton candy is perhaps every child’s dream and even adults. It is very important that you also watch and limit the amount of sugar you or your kids consume for healthier teeth and overall health.
