How NOT to Make Rock Candy

So I was going to enter this into the sugar contest and started preparing this project a few weeks ago. Must be three or four weeks ago by now. By now someone else has actually beaten me to it with a rather successful rock candy ib'le, but guess what? There's a EPIC FAIL contest, so why not enter this one as well, haha? For what it's worth, I believe there was a very small growth and the thought of the process is pretty neat.

Step 1: Ingredients

LOTS of sugar (3:1 ratio with water)

Water

Skewers or so (I only had chopsticks)

Food coloring (optional)

Small containers

Clothespin

Flavoring (optional)

Saucepan

Step 2: Dissolving the Sugar

The amount of pieces of rock candy you want to make and how many glass containers you have will determine how much water to use. The sugar/water ratio is 3:1, so for one cup of water, add 3 cups of sugar. I also added some vanilla extract to the water while the sugar was dissolving.

Step 3: Prepping the Skewers

Once you have syrup, dip your skewers into the solution and then cover them in sugar granules, which will allow the rock candy to grow.

Next, set the syrup aside and let it cool down. This is important because once you dip the sugar covered skewers into the solution, it might dissolve if your syrup is still warm.

So, even though I let my syrup cool down, I found that my sugar on the skewers dissolved anyway. Once I noticed that a few days into the whole deal, I dipped the skewers into syrup and sugar again and stuck them into the freezer. I do think this helped at least a little bit.

Step 4: Setting Up the Containers

So next, I added a drop of food coloring to each container, then dipped the sugar covered skewers into them and used the clothespins to hold them in place.

THEN you wait..............................

Step 5: I Waited One Week

Step 6: I Waited Two Weeks

After two weeks I noticed a sugar crust had developed on the surface, but nothing so far on the skewers (what you see is just from what I did at the beginning). I decided to just leave the skewers in the containers to see if they would ever grow any candy at all.

Step 7: Three or Four Weeks Later...

So this is what we got! Kinda a big disappointment. I think a tiny bit did grow, but it sure wasn't worth all the waiting and ALL that sugar. Man, that was just SO much sugar.

On a brighter side, this was one of the quickest and simplest instructable I've ever written. Haha. ;)

Please consider voting in the sugar or epic fail contest. :D

Comments

[AditiG17]

Once the candy is grown wht is to be done with the leftover sugar in jar??

[mlawing]

Nice instructable! I've yet to try my hand at this.

[madeinthegarage]

Good luck! Just make sure not to follow my recipe, though! Haha. See for tips below.

[punkgirl]

Good attempt :)
I tried my hand at rock candy not long ago too and it was a bit of a flop.
I figured out where I went wrong, and it's possible you did too.
I've learnt that a ration of 4:1 will yield better results and heat the sugar really high! Like on a rolling boil up to 350F.
You do want the solution to cool almost completely, then it's best to leave it completely undisturbed.
I'm yet to try it again, but good luck to you if you do :)

[madeinthegarage]

Thanks, I probably won't just because I'm not too crazy about using all that sugar with an unknown outcome. Haha. But it sure was interesting and I'm completely mesmerized my the little crystals. They're too pretty to throw out.