May 15, 2012: The class was on Classic Carnival Treats: funnel cake, elephant ears, caramel corn and cotton candy.
Here instructor/Pantry owner Brandi Henderson tests the temperature of the hot sugar mixture for the cotton candy with her trusty Thermapen. Brandi won me over right at the start of class by asking us why we took the class, "because," she said, "it's a little weird." Which is PRECISELY why I took the class. I actually have no particular affection for carnival food, but I am a sucker for a novel cooking class idea.
Here's a key tool for making cotton candy - a decapitated wire whisk. Brandi said just get one at a second hand shop and use tin snips or pliers to cut off the head.
After heating up the sugar to precisely 310 degrees (any hotter and it will caramelize, which is usually delicious, but for cotton candy, you want pure clean sweetness in your sugar syrup), she quickly stirred it into a mixture of food coloring and sweet orange oil flavoring.
The vibrant sugar mixture. This can also be poured into lollipop molds for candy.
And here's the action! You take the decapitated whisk, load it up with the molten sugar mixture and swish it across paper.
Here's the candy floss beginning to form.
Then you roll it up onto the cotton candy paper cone.
Ta-da!
It definitely requires some practice to get the right timing between swishing and rolling. If you let it sit just a few seconds too long after swishing, or as the mixture cools and the floss gets thicker, you might end up with a pile of candy threads like this. Which are still tasty.
The candy dots left on the parchment.
More finished cotton candy. It is a fun project for an adventurous person who likes to try the unusual culinary project. Just don't expect to get big giant clouds with this manual method like you would from a machine.
Brandi also made some of the most amazing caramel corn I've ever had, with cashews and Kashmiri curry powder. It tasted like a deliciously complex ginger snap.
This sad pile was my poor attempt at a funnel cake.
My mutant-looking finished funnel cake. But it still tasted great with Brandi's lemony blueberry compote on top.
Here is an elephant ear in the frying oil.
And the cinnamon-sugary finished product. This was my first class at the Pantry and I really loved the space and Brandi as a teacher. Their classes almost always fill very fast, so be sure to sign up for their newsletter for first word when new classes are announced. Great fun, beautiful space and worth a visit.