RECIPE - Cash Lettieri
Blue Glass
Rock Candy
Ready in 1 hour 30 minutes
Tips
- Don’t try to cook multiple batches at
once, you can get overwhelmed with
keeping track of the temperature
-
- Have the baking sheets with tin foil
ready before you start the boiling
process
Ingredients and Tools
● Water
●
●
Corn Syrup
Granulated sugar
● Blue gel food coloring
● Candy thermometer
● Tin foil
● Baking sheet
Preparation
1. Put corn syrup, sugar, and water
ingredients in a small to medium sized
pot
2. Place tin foil on the baking sheet
3. Place pot on a stove and stir until mixture
is boiling
4. Place the candy thermometer
5. Wait for the temperature to get to 300°F
and take the pot off the stove
6. Once it’s off the stove wait a few seconds
for bubbles to go down
7. Optional: Add food coloring and mix until
color is well distributed
8. Pour the mixture onto the baking sheet
9. Let candy cool for 30-45 minutes
 candy that was boiled to 325°F is a different
color. This is because all the water was boiled
Personal Commentary away and the sugar started to burn. This can
I decided to do rock glass candy as a especially be noticed in the more sugar
joke at first because of the show recipe, when it was boiled to 325°F it turned
Breaking Bad. As I did research into a yellow color rather than staying at white
the chemistry of rock candy and color. Glass candy gets its name from the
thought of ideas on how I could alter noncrystalline structure. Glass is more
the recipe, it was somewhat generalized as a term for a solid with an
interesting. Doing the experiment amorphous structure. An amorphous
was super fun but it took me a lot structure is a structure with no pattern.
longer than I thought. First I was Glass rock candy is able to be clear because
making one batch at a time but it was you cool it so fast that it has no time to form
super time-consuming since I wasn’t crystals. Dissolved sucrose molecules begin
really efficient with my time. I to bond to one another, but in no particular
decided to try to make 3 batches at order.
once, not a great idea. The pots
overflowed and it became a mess all
over the stove. The final product I
thought was super cool, it was
interesting to see how much was
changed between the recipes. It was
super surprising to me that the candy
with more sugar and cooked to soft
crack, was super soft and almost like
a sugar cube. When doing the taste
test people were super excited to try
Overall I would call this project a
success, I learned a lot from cooking
the food and the chemistry behind it.

Chemistry
In candy making, you can measure the
sugar concentration depending on
Soft Crack Hard Crack 325°F
what temperature the candy is boiled
at. As the candy boils, more water
evaporates making the sugar
concentration higher. At a certain
temperature, the water is all gone
and the sugar starts to burn. In my
experiment, you can see that the
Experiment
In this experiment, I wanted to see
how much the temperature and
amount of ingredients changed the
rock candy. I made 9 batches of the
rock candy, 3 batches with more
sugar, 3 batches with more water, and
3 batches of the recipe not changed.
The reason I made 3 batches was to
change the temperatures of each
batch. I would have 1 batch boiled
until 275°F, the next batch boiled to
300°F, and the last batch boiled to
325°F.
Sources
The Sweet Science of Candymaking
Experiment Results
My hypothesis for my experiment
was that the heat would only change
the hardness and the amount of
ingredients would only change the
taste. This was partially true, the
amount of ingredients did change the
taste but it was mainly the
temperature at which the candy was
boiled that changed the taste. When
the candy was boiled to 275°F there
was more water making it not as
sweet. As the candy is boiled for
longer periods of time, the water
evaporates making the
higher-temperature candy sweeter.
In my taste test, I organized the candy
by how much of a certain ingredient
was used.