It IS Rock (candy) Science

The girls are working on a Science Try-it for Brownies. They came home with homework on Tuesday night. It seemed quite easy. Follow the directions and make rock candy. We started on Saturday afternoon. The girls helped me tie their strings and measure the ingredients. We added yellow food coloring and almond extract, which oddly enough smells just like maraschino cherries.

We followed the directions exactly. We checked on the jars at 12 hours, then 24 hours...

then 36 hours and at 48 hours, we had.....NOTHING! Not a single silly crystal had formed on our strings. The directions I read said you should see small crystals within 24 hours. I got online and googled for other recipes. I found several comments where people said you had to boil the sugar mixture 10-15 minutes. I found another recipe that said the mixture had to reach 300 degrees. After having issues with my last batch of strawberry jam and learning there's a magic temperature you have to reach for it to gel right, I was bound and determined to hit the magic 300.

We poured the sugar mixture out of our jars and tried again...this time with my handy dandy candy thermometer. I set the buzzer and at the magic 15 minutes, we had reached the magic 300 degrees! Finally, I was sure we'd see crystals forming just like the directions said.

Wrong! Instead, as soon as I poured the cooled sugar mixture into the jars, it started hardening into hard candy. We had lollipops, not rock candy. I tried to salvage the candy (why, I don't know - there's just something about wasting 4 cups of sugar), but we ended up throwing it all in the trash. I have my mason jars soaking in warm water. I'm not sure I can salvage them. There's big globs of hard candy stuck to the inside of the jars. They may have to end up in the trash with all the rest. At least Dan got a good laugh out of all of it. He even grabbed my camera "because it needed to be documented!" Silly man!

I'm debating a third attempt. I now know the sugar mixture has to boil more than a minute, but less than 15. Anyone know the magic number because I sure don't!