Introduction: Magic Edible Harry Potter Wands

About: My name is Britt Michelsen. I am a chemical engineer from Germany especially interested in computational fluid dynamics. To balance all the theoretical work, I like to make stuff in my free time

While surfing the web, I found quite a few wands, similar to the ones used in the Harry Potter films. I wanted to make edible ones that could do some "magic", but even though the ones I found were called "magic" their only function was to serve as food...

So after some brain storming I decided to make them myself with the help of two friends. We had a lot of fun and were surprised, how good they turned out.

Step 1: Stuff You Need

For the wands:
  • 500g sugar
  • a tablespoon of corn syrup
  • white and black chocolate depending on the type, that you would like to make
  • Aluminium foil
  • wood pole or a long wooden spoon with a diameter of one cm
  • fondant (if you need a recipe, check out this site)
  • icing colours
  • wire
For the "magic"

method one: (Indicator reaction)
  • red cabbage sauce (as a pH-indicator)
  • L-Arginin (you can get it in the apothecary)
  • Citric acid (you can get it in the apothecary)
method two: (colouring the tongue)
  • powdered food colouring
method three: (making water glow under UV light)
  • Vitamin B2

Step 2: Making the Mould

First you will have to measure the right length according to the wand, that you would like to make and mark it on the wooden stick. Here are some length, that you can use:

Albus Dumbledore 16 inch
Draco Malfoy 10 inch
Hermione Granger 10.75 inch
Harry Potter 11 inch
Ron Weasley 14 inch (his second one)
Rubeus Hagrid 16 inch
Lord Voldemort 13.5 inch
Now take the aluminium foil and cut it to the correct length plus an additional 2 cm. Roll the aluminium foil around the wooden stick and tighten the end by twisting it, as shown in the second picture.
To prevent the hot liquid sugar burning your hand, we are going to build a small handle out of wire, as shown in the fourth picture.

Step 3: Cooking the Sugar

Now we will cook the sugar, we tried making the wands entirely out of chocolate, but they melted pretty fast and lost their form.

Add about 250 ml of water to 500 g of sugar and slowly heat the mixture. Stir until it starts boiling and add a tablespoon of corn syrup. Let it cook until it has about 300°F, if you want you can add food colouring. Set the pot for about 10 second on a table cloth and after that time CAREFULLY pour it into the aluminium forms.

If you don't have a candy thermometer don't worry, you can find out whether you mixture is ready, by taking a spoon and letting a huge drop of it fall into cold water, if it immediately hardens and you can break it like glass, it's ready.

Hints on cooking sugar:
If you are having problems with your sugar crystallizing, instead of having a nice clear result, try using a brush with a little bit of water and wipe the inside of your cooking pot with it until there is no more sugar that has crystallized.
Another thing you can try is to dip the pot into room temperature water, to immediately stop the cooking process, after the sugar has reached 300°F.

Step 4: Decoration

In our opinion fondant worked perfectly for the handles, because chocolate melts pretty fast in the hands and it's easier to mold. As you can see in the pictures, we didn't use gloves, which resulted in quite stained fingers... It's probably better to avoid this.

We covered the rest of the wands with chocolate, as shown in the pictures. If you want them to colour your tongue add powdered food colouring to it. It will only stain your tongue and not the chocolate.

After you are done place your wands in the fridge.

Step 5: The Fun Part

Now to the fun part:

Type one:
As shown in the video, in the intro step, you can produce a nice indicator reaction with your wands and red cabbage juice. All you need is a base (in our case L-Arginin) and an acid (in our case citric acid). Dip your wand into water and afterwards into one of the powders. If you now stir with it in the red cabbage juice (dilute it with a bit of water) it will change its colour.

Type two:
As you can see in the second and third picture, if you add powdered food colouring to your chocolate the wand will colour your tongue, while you are eating it.

Type three:
If you dip your wand into vitamin B2 and then into water, it will start to glow under UV light.

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