DIY candy game

A simple recipe to add some variety to your Thanksgiving 2021 dinner!

Warn­ing! Only un­der adult su­per­vi­sion.

Equip­ment

  • sug­ar;
  • bak­ing soda;
  • parch­ment pa­per;
  • mug;
  • met­al cook­ie cut­ter.

Step-by-step in­struc­tions

Melt some sug­ar and add a bit of bak­ing soda. Mix well and pour the re­sult­ing mass onto a sheet of parch­ment pa­per. Flat­ten it with the bot­tom of a mug. Now you just need to im­press a shape in the mix­ture us­ing a met­al cook­ie cut­ter – can you ex­tract the shape from the cook­ie with just a nee­dle?

Process de­scrip­tion

When heat­ed, sug­ar mol­e­cules com­bine to form carame­lans, carame­lens and caramelins – sub­stances with large mol­e­cules that com­prise caramel and give it its char­ac­ter­is­tic brown col­or and high vis­cos­i­ty. The added bak­ing soda re­leas­es car­bon diox­ide un­der high tem­per­a­tures, which is trapped in the caramel, caus­ing it to foam and light­en in col­or. The re­sult­ing "cook­ie," known as dalgo­na, is a pop­u­lar dessert that first ap­peared in South Ko­rea and spread around the world un­der var­i­ous names, in­clud­ing por­ous caramel. This is sim­ple, de­li­cious, and sci­en­tif­ic fun for your Thanks­giv­ing hol­i­day!

Cool ex­per­i­ments to amuse your chil­dren be­fore Thanks­giv­ing din­ner await you in the MEL Sci­ence sub­scrip­tion!

Try it