I made this cube with 500g of ice candy (my kitchen smells too sweet in a bad way now after cooking this) but unfortunately it was impossible to melt the candy without caramelising it, at least not in the speed I wanted. Maybe with triple the time available I could reach a transparent lava state and end up with a better looking cube. I also experienced more sugar shards than with my regular water-sugar recipe, and I went to sleep with my hands covered in invisible cuts and blood dots. Lessons learned: handling these with gloves from now on. I managed to produce a tile as well, looks pretty good. Overall the benefit of candy rocks is the stability, but I might not even need so much hardness after all.

Another experiment with ratios. The green part was made with a 2:1 water-sugar ratio, the pink one with 2:1 sugar-water ratio, which was somehow the less stable and stickier of the two, but took considerably less time to produce. Both start off with 200g of sugar, five drops of food colouring. The hole on the green disc was a happy accident. Final weight: 368g / Dimensions: 24x24cm

pretty happy with these sticking to the ratio 1:1,25 from now on cooking with no stirring is keeping the crystallisation under control.

extremely upset that this crystallised… ratio was 1:1,15, two drops of food colouring, 300g of sugar. 255g is the weight of the final plate. I’m currently preserving all my plates with talc, seems to work so far.

(yes I burned it)

Day two of testing materials for the loudspeakers. Today I’m melting lollipops in the oven, which was much easier than getting my sugar in hard crack stage. I overcooked it after I added the yellow ones, so it got a bit too golden and very bubbly, which added to the lightness. Only 74g, roughly same size as the first attempt but lighter.

Day 01 of testing materials for the loudspeakers. Today I made a plate out of sugar, 15 cm, 2mm thick, around 94g. 1:1,25 ratio. Mental note: keep it away from moisture. I accidentally placed on top of a wet wrap and it was never dry again. I used a hair drier to make it less moist and sticky but it didn’t work so well. To research: how to polish it after it hardens. I tried a nail filer but the sugar dust glued to the piece because they are made of sugar (duh). Maybe get a heat lamp to work on final shaping. The white swirl is caused by the sugar crystallisation that happens immediately after two parts with slightly differing temperatures touch one another. I like it but it would be interesting to test a better pouring technique to see how translucent it can be. Worked well with the exciter!