Homemade Rock Candy: Tips and Tricks (Video) (2024)

FAQs

How do you make rock candy for 1 hour? ›

🍭🍬 DIY ROCK CANDY! 🍭🍬 Ingredients: 4 cups water, 10 cups sugar (It's an approx 1:3 water sugar ratio), food coloring Equipment: 5 skewers, 5 mason jars, 5 clothes pins Instructions: - Wet your 5 skewers and coat them in sugar. Leave them to dry completely for at least an hour.

In the rock candy, the liquid is water and the compound is sugar. A solution is saturated when the liquid holds as much of the compound dissolved in it as possible. For example, when making rock candy, you dissolve as much sugar as possible in water to make a saturated solution.

You can start with a 1:2 water/sugar ratio, but we've had better luck just shy of a 1:3 water sugar ratio. So if you have 4 cups of water, you'll need between about 10 cups of sugar to make the perfect sugar syrup. Scroll to the bottom for some frequently asked questions for making rock candy.

The simple answer is that there is too much moisture in your candy.

To speed up the process, you jump-start the nucleation process by adding sugar crystals, called seed crystals, to the string first. These actively attract other molecules to join them, so sugar crystals tend to grow on those seed crystals.

In a saucepan, heat at least three cups of Sugar together with one cup of water. You want to dissolve as much Sugar as possible into the water. While stirring, bring the sugar solution to a boil. Remove the pan from heat and, if you want, add a few drops of food colouring and 1/2 teaspoon of flavouring.

It fails if you live someplace where the air is so humid that evaporation is very slow or if you place the container in a location where the temperature fluctuates (like a sunny windowsill) so that the sugar stays in solution.

Gather the ingredients and materials. Aside from sugar, you'll need four 12-ounce Mason jars or one quart-sized Mason jar, wooden skewers or strings, and clothespins. For the smaller jars, you'll use one wooden skewer (or string) for each.

Dip the coated string/stick in granulated sugar and set aside on a plate for a moment. This process is important, because you are giving the sugar crystals a rough surface to cling to and allow for rapid growth!

If desired, you can add food coloring and flavoring to the solution. Mint, cinnamon, or lemon extract are good flavorings to try. Squeezing the juice from a lemon, orange, or lime is a way to give the crystals natural flavor, but the acid and other sugars in the juice may slow your crystal formation.

Does temperature matter when making rock candy? ›

Does temperature matter when making rock candy? Yes! Temperature is super important! You'll need to bring your sugar to the hard crack stage, which is 300°F; otherwise, it will not harden.

Crystallization is a physical change by which one substance in a mixture separates itself from the mixture and forms solid, crystalline particles with other molecules of the same substance. If you've ever seen rock candy, or made it at home, you have seen the result of sugar crystallization.

Sugar has a sticking point that is around 10 degrees Celsius higher than its glass transition temperature Tg value. Stickiness will result from a low cooking temperature. Packing materials that aren't up to snuff. In the processing area, there is more humidity.

You might be able to use a knife (carefully) to pry them apart depending on much they are stuck together. You can try filling jar with water (warm water is more effective) so they start dissolving and unstuck. Then they can be dried outside of the jar.

At home the humidity is around 30 to 55 percent. This is enough to wet hard sugar candies. The sugar absorbs the water in air and dissolves to form sugar syrup on the outsides of the candy. That is why it gets soft and gooey.

Heat sugar, corn syrup, and water in a large, heavy saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring constantly, until sugar dissolves and mixture is boiling, about 5 minutes. Stop stirring and boil until a candy thermometer reads 300 to 310 degrees F (149 to 154 degrees C), about 25 minutes.

When you make rock candy, you can see the shape of sugar crystals on a giant scale. The key is giving them lots of time (about 7 days) to grow. As the water evaporates, sugar crystals form on the string or stick, and the shapes that they form reflect the shape of individual sugar crystals.

If you don't have access to a stove, you can use a microwave instead. Combine the sugar and water in a microwave-safe glass and heat it for two minutes on high. Stir the sugar water and microwave for another 2 minutes. Stir the mixture a third time and the sugar should dissolve almost entirely into the water.