Because my blog is nothing if not edifying, allow me to tell you the story of the day that I made sugar glass. This is, of course, another entry in my long series of 'Ridiculous Experiments I have Done in the Name of Theatre'. The only longer series I have is 'Half Drunk Bottles of Liquor I Bring to My Friends' Houses in Order to Appear Like a Good, Generous Houseguest, but That Really Make Me Seem More Like a Hobo'. That series is possibly unending, although I don't know if anything ever will top the half-full Dasani bottle of mysterious purple ooze that I christened 'A Flaming Moe', and forced on my friend Morgan one time.
ONWARDS.
I learned it, like all things, from the Internet. God bless the Internet! It taught me how to love again.
You too can learn:
You start with simple household ingredients:
Except, like everything, simple household ingredients aren't usually in your household. I found the Cream of Tartar pretty easily, but white corn syrup had to be sourced from Bulk Barn, purveyors of all my favourite things. Oh, God Bless Bulk Barn. Anyway. You can also apparently find white corn syrup in Korean grocery stores. Anyway, that hurdle accomplished, you will feel proud of yourself until the next thing goes wrong.
Now, you may be thinking that these ingredients look suspiciously like baking, which is something that I love to do, the results of which I frequently force on my friends. You are also likely thinking, 'Jessica, you love nothing more than when your passions for baking and theatre converge and you are given the chance to make some sort of dramatic delicacy!' This is true, and could be well documented in a series of photos, but it will not be because I am tired. HOWEVER. As I will quickly learn, this really has more to do with science than it does baking.
NOW DON'T GET ME WRONG, I LOVE SCIENCE. But I'm not very good at it. Things I am good at include burning the house down, ignoring instructions, and improperly measuring ingredients, but I don't see how those have anything to do with my failure at the scientific arts (Fact: They are not arts, and scientists don't like it when you call them that. They also don't like when you always try to do a creative spin on science presentations, such as puppeteering a dolphin and singing a song you made up to 'Under the Sea', called 'How Dolphins Speak'. I learned these when I had to take science, up til grade 13. I was enthusiastic, but a less than stellar practitioner).
You also prepare a mold. When you are preparing a mold, you should also prepare to ruin your mother's baking sheet.
So, you pour all these things in a pot and it looks like this:
Then you slowly heat it and it will look like this:
It is at this stage that you are legally entitled to tap your fingers together and murmur, 'Yes, yes, my pretty. Bubble away....soon'.
It is also at this stage that, no matter how badly you want to, you should no longer put your tongue in the mixture. However, if the French are storming your castle, you are at the right stage to pour it as they climb up your flying buttresses. Make sure to feather them too!
And when it looks like this:
You pour it into your mold.
Where you quickly turn it into a work of art.
Look how pretty!
I guess somewhere along this process, you can take an offramp and end up somewhere in Candyland, which is a hell of a lot more fun than Scienceville, and I'm guessing you get things like these:
Which are beautiful, but we all know actually taste pretty terrible, and are all probably stuck together, in the shape of an old lady's candy dish, where they have been languishing since the Diefenbaker administration.
I'm actually totally surprised and pleased that it worked as well as it did. But it tasted terrible. Ugh.
And tomorrow I will do something very exciting with it! Seriously! Or else it will be a dismal failure and I will regret writing this!
Stay tuned....
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