Cotton Candy Is a Symbol of Fairs and the Circus, and Rightly So

Cotton candy is nothing more than pure sugar, air and a little color. Every time you go to the circus or any fair your children have to get a large wad of it. Maybe you have to get some for yourself.

How Cotton Candy is Made

To make the cottony treat, all that is required is heat, a spinning column with very small holes in it a little way up, and a bowl for the candy. The heat will liquify the sugar in the column, and when the column spins the sugar will travel up the sides and out the holes. The liquid sugar solidifies when it hits the air and forms threads in the bowl. The mass can then be easily gathered on a cardboard stick.

If you want to make some yourself, you will need a cotton candy machine, then just sugar and perhaps food coloring. First, you melt the sugar into a liquid state, then pour the melted sugar into the appropriate spot on your machine. The machine will then force the liquid through its holes, then spin the liquid-sugar threads around and it's at this point that they turn back into a solid. The threads are caught in a bowl, and from there you gether them up.

What it Amounts To

If you took the mass of candy from the bag you get at the circus, and melt it in water, then evaporated the water away, you would only be left with about a tablespoon of sugar. The bags at the circus cost six to ten dollars. That seems fitting that the institution that is famous for the phrase, “There’s a sucker born every minute” is synonymous with this expensive tablespoon of sugar!

One advantage to this is that you can nibble on this treat for quite a while without getting too many calories!

For more related information:

Candy | Mixed Candy | Rock Candy