As anyone who follows me on Twitter or is my friend on Facebook knows, I’ve been having a bit of an odd obsession lately. And that obsession is with rock candy. Really, though, don’t blame me. You can thank Kristine. It was this post that did it. I saw that rock candy (on a very adorable cake, by the way) and suddenly it was all I could think about.
Rock candy rock candy rock candyrockcandyrockcandy. I’m sure it was very annoying. (In fact, apparently more than one of my sister’s friends saw my FB status updates and kept saying FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WILL YOU PLEASE GET YOUR SISTER SOME ROCK CANDY.)
As it turns out, there is unfortunately no rock candy to be had in the town where I live. At least not that I could find, and believe me when I say I carted poor AE all around town one day in search of it. I even went into kitschy Texana-type stores, which I normally avoid like the plague. I discovered that the local mall’s candy store is for crap. Usually it’s readily available at souvenir shops, and sadly, I simply do not live in a tourist mecca of any kind. You can get it at Cracker Barrel, but we don’t have one of those either. At least not for another couple of months, and my craving for rock candy was not willing to wait that long.
Some of my friends were all “MAKE IT YOURSELF! You can do it!”
Spoiler alert: No. I cannot. But I did try. And while I’m on the subject, should you ever lose your mind (like me) and decide that you need rock candy RIGHT THIS MINUTE, I will let you in on a little secret (that you probably know already if you have taken a science class at about a 3rd grade level). Rock candy takes a while to form. It’s like a science experiment, and you have to let it sit for at least a day so all the little crystals can…well, crystallize, I guess. Anyway. Homemade rock candy = not an endeavor for the impatient.
Step 1: Make sure you have all necessary ingredients (sugar, water, corn syrup, and food coloring if desired) on hand. Check. Also, wine. Check check. Heat until the sugar dissolves.
Step 2: Put your weird cooling jar/string/dowel rod/pencil contraption whatzit out of the way, someplace where it can sit for a couple of days while the crystals supposedly form on the strings. (Which in this case, means in front of liquor non-cabinet in far corner of kitchen.)
Step 3: Pour the hot, sugary, colored goo into your glasses to crystallize (or make your husband do it, as I did). As it turns out, you need some sort of weight on the ends of the strings otherwise they just float up. Lesson learned, after a few stressful moments of rigging them with part of a binder clip, for lack of anything better.
Step 4: Uncertainty sets in but as it turns out, sugar crystals do not.
Step 5: Wait a few days. Admit defeat, cut your losses, and go visit your sister, who lives in the nearest metropolitan area where there are actual decent candy stores that carry rock candy. Locate one of these candy shops with your iPhone, and go buy some freaking rock candy in what will probably be the quickest sale ever made by the befuddled store owner, who is used to people browsing his shop for extended periods of time instead of weirdos like you, who march in, grab a package of purple rock candy (the only acceptable color) and bring it to the register inside of fifteen seconds, while your sister is trying to convince you to buy more than one package because for the love of all that is good and holy, she doesn’t ever want to hear about your need for rock candy for the rest of her life, she’s warning you.
The end.
