I did an individual experiment with Morgan and Ivy. We proposed the idea of making pop rocks. Homemade pop rocks are a combination of corn syrup, sugar, baking soda, citric acid, flavoring and color and is heated 300 degrees. It was pretty easy to make, but we had some roadblocks along the way.
Throughout the process of making the pop rocks, we were very confused on what temperature the mixture was at because we didn’t know we needed a candy thermometer, but we had a regular thermometer. We were just estimating the temperature because the mixture was boiling and we didn’t want to burn it, so we put it on the wax paper to cool. It was a bad idea to take it out now because it wasn’t even close to 300 degrees. It ended up hardening for a half an hour, but it quickly melted into this laffy taffy mix that was sour, sticky, and no one wanted to eat it. It was hard to rip off into chunks because it was so sticky. We needed to cook it so much longer. It was such a struggle to take the candy off of the cooking utensils because it hardens and sticks to the cold. It was a pain to eat the candy too. We put WAY too much citric acid and it was really sour. I couldn’t even put a little chunk in my mouth for too long. It actually tasted really good once you got over the sourness, but it took a while to get over the taste. Personally, I thought it was going to work out and be like actual pop rocks. We later learned that you need really high tech equipment and to cook the candy at 600 degrees. Looks like my childhood dream of being a candy maker has been crushed.
I really liked working with Morgan and Ivy because they're my friends and friends tend to work really well together. We had no conflicts and we were having a lot of fun trying to figure out how to do this. Our group was really chill about this lab and we were just trying to see if we could actually pull it off.
Moving forward, I don’t think I will ever be making candy ever again because you had to make very little mistakes or else it tasted kinda funky. We ended up throwing the mess away, so the only takeaway I have is to put less citric acid than there needs to be and to be patient! Although it was really fun, it was really hard because you had to give it constant attention like it was a child (lol). Overall, it was a really good experience and I found a big weakness of cooking candy. #thestruggleisreal
Throughout the process of making the pop rocks, we were very confused on what temperature the mixture was at because we didn’t know we needed a candy thermometer, but we had a regular thermometer. We were just estimating the temperature because the mixture was boiling and we didn’t want to burn it, so we put it on the wax paper to cool. It was a bad idea to take it out now because it wasn’t even close to 300 degrees. It ended up hardening for a half an hour, but it quickly melted into this laffy taffy mix that was sour, sticky, and no one wanted to eat it. It was hard to rip off into chunks because it was so sticky. We needed to cook it so much longer. It was such a struggle to take the candy off of the cooking utensils because it hardens and sticks to the cold. It was a pain to eat the candy too. We put WAY too much citric acid and it was really sour. I couldn’t even put a little chunk in my mouth for too long. It actually tasted really good once you got over the sourness, but it took a while to get over the taste. Personally, I thought it was going to work out and be like actual pop rocks. We later learned that you need really high tech equipment and to cook the candy at 600 degrees. Looks like my childhood dream of being a candy maker has been crushed.
I really liked working with Morgan and Ivy because they're my friends and friends tend to work really well together. We had no conflicts and we were having a lot of fun trying to figure out how to do this. Our group was really chill about this lab and we were just trying to see if we could actually pull it off.
Moving forward, I don’t think I will ever be making candy ever again because you had to make very little mistakes or else it tasted kinda funky. We ended up throwing the mess away, so the only takeaway I have is to put less citric acid than there needs to be and to be patient! Although it was really fun, it was really hard because you had to give it constant attention like it was a child (lol). Overall, it was a really good experience and I found a big weakness of cooking candy. #thestruggleisreal