Minnesota Home Education: Teaching Kids How Cotton Candy is Formed

Sometimes, it's easier to show them how something is made so they understand. This seems to be a good method. I was hesitant to buy the machine but grandpa thought it would be okay to buy it, since the one granddaughter already liked cotton candy. He said that he wasn't going to eat any... but I'll bet if she offered it to him, he'd pretend to like it. Wouldn't you?

I now own a small, cotton candy making machine. How fun is that? You take it out of the box, wash it up a little - plug it in, turn it on and wait for the green light. It takes about four minutes for the red lights in the bowl to change to green. Like being in traffic...

Then, you add a little bit of sugar to the top and start collecting fuzzy strands of sugar. I was amazed how easy it was. The kit includes a paper wand to collect the fluff. I had a lot of fun. It tasted yummy, too. Maybe my granddaughters will visit this weekend and we can make some when they are here.

Yes. That's right. A bite-a tester is needed. In case you don't know, a beta tester is a hired tester. A bite-a tester is CHAR humor... Yeah. This is where we both laugh uproariously, as we appreciate how funny I am.

Or... not...

It seems to be melted on, so perhaps when I heat up the sugar again, it will melt out. Well. That was a bit of fun. I considered the fact that jello has a lot of sugar in it and some color, but I don't know if that would work very well or not. I also have some instant pudding mix.

I hate to get it all plugged up or start a fire. They must have a question and answer page somewhere online. I'll have to see.

Well. I bought mine at Walmart this morning. It was approximately forty dollars. I had to supply my own bag of sugar, which I already had, but the approximate cost of a five pound page of sugar is under three dollars.

Now if you had access to the little powdered sugar packages, that would be the idea amount to use each time. Then, you'd just have to get rid of the paper, unless you used it to collect your cotton candy.

Isn't that food for thought. Use the little package for a handle.There should be just enough paper there to catch the strings and just enough paper to hold on to.

You could use a cookie to collect up the cotton candy.. like one of those Vanilla sugar wafers with the creme filling. Or, a pirroette wafer. Or a pretzel.. one of those fudge covered ones.

WOULD'T that be a cute idea for a party? Little mini cotton candies on a cookie or a likemaid stick, or on a candy cigarette.

Oh, wait. I don't think they sell candy cigarettes here. Well, at any rate, they'd make an awesome stick for your cotton candy.

Well. Newsflash. Someone suggested a package of flavored Koolaid for making cotton candy. It's got color. It's got flavor, and by george, it should make colored Cotton Candy.

We found out that powdered sugar doesn't work. You see: regular sugar is round. It rolls. Like salt is square. That's how you can tell the difference if you have salt or sugar on a table. Round or square.

Now, powdered sugar... is very, very, very FLAT. It doesn't work in the machine at all. I know because my son tried it in there. I cannot make excuses for him... he's probably old enough to know better, but neither one of us knew how it would work and he's very daring.

I did end up taking a steak knife and chipping the burnt on powdered sugar off of my device. Note to self: do not do that again.