“First you bloat, and then you drop pounds like that… It explains it all on the label.”
-- Cady
Julia Child was popular less for her culinary excellence and more for her tendency to fail. Omelets were lost mid flip, fingers were burnt, and as - Dan Aykroyd has pointed out - small cuts were sustained. I’m grandiose enough to fancy myself a future pioneer in culinary education, so I will now compare myself to Julia Child. This post is dedicated to recipes that fail spectacularly. There. I’ve spun this. I’m not admitting to making a hot mess; I have intentionally ruined this dessert as part of a “teachable moment.”
Sponge candy is delicious. As Wikipedia points out, it goes by many names, but the premise is simple and directly related to 3rd grade science class. Make a dark, toasty sugar syrup (that always goes well) and then add vinegar and baking soda. The mixture foams like crazy and then hardens, trapping millions of crunchy bubbles into a honeycomb.
This is the recipe I used. I cannot recommend it. Sure that opening photo looks okay, but photos can be very flattering taken out of context (i.e., eHarmony profile photos). Let’s take a journey…
Measure out the sugar and corn syrup. I only had light corn syrup, so I just substituted a tablespoon of molasses for corn syrup. I suppose it’s possible that’s why this was a screaming failure, but I doubt it. I was really nervous about making another caramelized syrup until I noticed the corn syrup. With something in the pot besides sugar and water, the slurry won’t solidify into a crystallized, crunchy mess.
Add vinegar and a candy thermometer. You stir just a little and then walk away. Miss Marple had to order me to put down a spoon at one point. I tell you it isn’t cooking if I don’t get to stir vigorously!
Eighteen minutes in and we had reached 300 degrees, also known as the hard crack stage. That is, the syrup will form brittle threads. The hokey pokey itself will harden and be quite crunchy once fully cooled.
It is this next step where I believe things went... wrong. Several reviews mentioned that the baking soda has a tendency to clump and form unpleasant gritty spots in the finished puff candy, so I put the baking soda through a sieve and eliminated all lumps. Feeling clever, I failed to read all the directions. After adding the baking soda you need to give the mixture plenty of stirring. I barely folded the soda in and banked on the foaming action to do the rest.
The chemical reaction was fascinating. Miss Marple was manning the camera while I poured the golden cruncher. The mixture became opaque and swelled to at least three times its original size. I assumed this was similar to folding egg whites, and that over-beating would deflate the candy. I quickly dumped the expanding mess into my buttered, foil-lined Pyrex.
Okay, that's pretty cool. Hey, wait. It's still expanding. It's still - oh, God!
No, that's making it worse. Maybe the top will harden and hold everything...
Okay... Well at least it stopped - oh come on!
It's hard to not panic when liquid hot bonfire toffee is bubbling out of a pan and flowing across your kitchen counter. Still, the foaming clearly happened, and the color is right, so once this cools, it should be fine.
Oh. That's attractive. After cooling overnight the sea foam had collapsed into a bowl of deflated failure.
Your Fearless Leader:
Fine. It's ugly. But maybe that's why it's often sold covered in chocolate. Maybe this tastes delicious. Sadly that was not the case. I thought the texture was right, but that's all. Little bits of unmixed baking soda (visible in the picture above) were unwanted, salty surprises. The yellow man varied from flavorless to toasty to burnt with each bite. The only thing fairy food candy has going for it is a certain coolness factor, which was lost once it spread across my counter in a wave of sticky regret.
The Gaggle:
A reason Fearful Leader decided to make this is because this is one of my favorite candies and we were sure we could make it better and cheaper than the imported bars from the UK. We were so, so wrong. I wasn't really paying attention through the beginning of the adventure, but appeared in the kitchen just as FL was getting ready to add the baking soda and pour it into the Pyrex (this is a common strategy for me, as the timing usually coincides with getting to lick the bowl). Luckily I had the camera ready for the disaster to come, but I do regret that I didn't have the foresight to take video. I'll just have to give you a rough transcription instead:
FL: And now we fold in the baking soda, just so. Now pouring it into the bowl.....
Me: That's really fizzy. How much baking soda did you put in it?
FL: The right amount. It'll calm down.
Me: I think it's growing.
FL: Uh...
Me: It's definitely growing. Really fast. I think it's about to--
FL: (shrieking) Oh God! It's everywhere! I think it's alive!
Me: Is that a tentacle?! Dear God, someone kill it before it kill us!
FL: Nooooooooo! Save the countertops! Stop it!
Me: It's too late, Fearful! Save yourself!
As you might have noticed from the rough transcription, we were unprepared for the monster we'd foolishly unleashed. After we'd managed (in a great feat of bravery and whiskey) to puncture and deflate it, we decided that, like all great hunters, we needed to eat our kill. Yet another mistake. It wasn't until after the shocking and fizzy first bite that we inspected the beast's pitted surface and discovered the glistening white lumps of powder adorning it like coke on Charlie Sheen's coffee table. Inedible.
The verdict:
2 for Appearance
3 for Taste
10+ for Entertainment Value (Make it with your kids for a much more exciting demonstration of vinegar + baking soda than that tired volcano project!)
-- Miss Marple
This dessert was a total failure. It failed to satisfy both my palette and my sense of aesthetics. It was the Thomas Kinkaid painting of homemade candy, so saccharine and misshapen that all you can do is stare in horror. Foam candy is a wonderful idea, but whether it was the recipe or the baker, this attempt fell flat on its face.
-- Dorian
The chemical reaction was fascinating. Miss Marple was manning the camera while I poured the golden cruncher. The mixture became opaque and swelled to at least three times its original size. I assumed this was similar to folding egg whites, and that over-beating would deflate the candy. I quickly dumped the expanding mess into my buttered, foil-lined Pyrex.
Okay, that's pretty cool. Hey, wait. It's still expanding. It's still - oh, God!
No, that's making it worse. Maybe the top will harden and hold everything...
Okay... Well at least it stopped - oh come on!
It's hard to not panic when liquid hot bonfire toffee is bubbling out of a pan and flowing across your kitchen counter. Still, the foaming clearly happened, and the color is right, so once this cools, it should be fine.
Oh. That's attractive. After cooling overnight the sea foam had collapsed into a bowl of deflated failure.
Your Fearless Leader:
Fine. It's ugly. But maybe that's why it's often sold covered in chocolate. Maybe this tastes delicious. Sadly that was not the case. I thought the texture was right, but that's all. Little bits of unmixed baking soda (visible in the picture above) were unwanted, salty surprises. The yellow man varied from flavorless to toasty to burnt with each bite. The only thing fairy food candy has going for it is a certain coolness factor, which was lost once it spread across my counter in a wave of sticky regret.
The Gaggle:
A reason Fearful Leader decided to make this is because this is one of my favorite candies and we were sure we could make it better and cheaper than the imported bars from the UK. We were so, so wrong. I wasn't really paying attention through the beginning of the adventure, but appeared in the kitchen just as FL was getting ready to add the baking soda and pour it into the Pyrex (this is a common strategy for me, as the timing usually coincides with getting to lick the bowl). Luckily I had the camera ready for the disaster to come, but I do regret that I didn't have the foresight to take video. I'll just have to give you a rough transcription instead:
FL: And now we fold in the baking soda, just so. Now pouring it into the bowl.....
Me: That's really fizzy. How much baking soda did you put in it?
FL: The right amount. It'll calm down.
Me: I think it's growing.
FL: Uh...
Me: It's definitely growing. Really fast. I think it's about to--
FL: (shrieking) Oh God! It's everywhere! I think it's alive!
Me: Is that a tentacle?! Dear God, someone kill it before it kill us!
FL: Nooooooooo! Save the countertops! Stop it!
Me: It's too late, Fearful! Save yourself!
As you might have noticed from the rough transcription, we were unprepared for the monster we'd foolishly unleashed. After we'd managed (in a great feat of bravery and whiskey) to puncture and deflate it, we decided that, like all great hunters, we needed to eat our kill. Yet another mistake. It wasn't until after the shocking and fizzy first bite that we inspected the beast's pitted surface and discovered the glistening white lumps of powder adorning it like coke on Charlie Sheen's coffee table. Inedible.
The verdict:
2 for Appearance
3 for Taste
10+ for Entertainment Value (Make it with your kids for a much more exciting demonstration of vinegar + baking soda than that tired volcano project!)
-- Miss Marple
This dessert was a total failure. It failed to satisfy both my palette and my sense of aesthetics. It was the Thomas Kinkaid painting of homemade candy, so saccharine and misshapen that all you can do is stare in horror. Foam candy is a wonderful idea, but whether it was the recipe or the baker, this attempt fell flat on its face.
-- Dorian
You realize, of course, that I must try this. What could be more fun than molten sugar moving like magma across my counters?
ReplyDeleteNaturally. I recommend doing this with children underfoot. It isn't cooking if there isn't a trip to the hospital just around the corner.
ReplyDelete