This year in science we have been looking at chemistry. While looking at that Carwai brought up the idea of also looking at the different stages of sugar. What we did first was looking up the stages of sugar. We found out that there are seven stages of sugar, the lowest being at a temperature of 223°F and the hottest stage before the sugar becoming burnt at 320°F. We then looked at the different candies that can be made out of each different stage. Then we got into groups based on what we wanted to make. I ended up being in a group with Tati and Sydney. We decided that we would make taffy. Once every other group had decided on what they wanted to try and make. We each chose a day that we would try and make our candies. Our group was going on the last day because we had to order flavorings for our salt-water taffy and that didn’t show up till the day before.
As groups started to work on their candies, groups were finding out that making candies is a lot harder then we thought. Making burnt sugar on the other hand… very easy. Most groups were finding it difficult to wait for there sugar to cook and the temperature to rise gradually, so they turned the heat up. The problem with that was then the temperature shot past what it needed to be and they ended up with burnt sugar. So when we were making our taffy, Tati made sure that the level of heat never went higher than six because she wanted to make sure that ours was one of the candies that people wouldn’t actually mind eating. So we watched our sugar boil for a long time. But, once it reached the temperature that we needed, we made sure to take it out right away and pour it into a bowl. This was when the more or less difficult part came. We had to put in flavoring and food coloring so that it looked like legit candy. Then we had to pull the taffy. This was quite painful because the taffy was still like 150 degrees and it would burn your finger tips. The problem was that we left the taffy in for a little long so we had to pull it fast or else it would harden and then it wouldn’t really be taffy. Once we had attempted to stretch it out, it ended up hardening and it was pretty much hard candy. Even though it didn’t turn out how we thought it was going to, it was a hole lot better than burnt sugar.
If we could change a few things about what we did the first thing would be to try and take the taffy off a little sooner. I think that even though we took it right off, it kept on heating up so if we had taken it off like 10 or 15 degrees before we had to that would’ve been better. Another thing that I would have also changed was the flavoring amount that we used. I think that it would’ve been better to use a lot more flavoring because even though it still tasted good, our taffy didn’t really have the flavors that we had tried to make. Other than those two things everything else went really well. Something that I really liked though was when we were trying to make the apple taffy and put in a lot of green food coloring so it was like really green and it just looked sick.
