Rock Candy

Has anyone ever made rock candy? More specifically, has anyone ever made rock candy in slightly more exotic flavors, using extracts/oils/syrups?

I'd kind of like to make some rock candy with flavors more interesting than cotton candy, or blue raspberry. Any tips?

No tips, but I have tons of flavors around my lab if you want to try some.

Golly! Made it as a kid but can't imagine that there isn't a more...um..."professional" way of proceeding than as I did back a few (cough, cough) decades ago. Make supersaturated solution of sugar; drop in a couple pieces of string (weighted down, possibly, with something like a washer tied to one end). Wait. Wait some more. Wait still more. Eat.

I've not personally made it but I've participated in my best friend's family ritual at making rock candy. Every year their grandmother gathers the troops around her small Michigan kitchen while she boils up pot after pot of candy -- I believe there were at least 10-12 different varieties every year and we'd all wait for it to be poured onto our slabs and cookie sheets, scissors in hand and the aromas of the oils of the different flavors would just completely saturate the house. Most of the varieties were obvious -- lemon, cherry, peppermint (boy howdy does that one smell good), root beer but they also made clove, anise, spearmint and a really lovely orangey/citrusy flavor. What you'd do is the cut smallish pieces out of your hot slabs (my friend's father always sprinkling powdered sugar over your candy and hands while you cut) until they'd gather hundreds and hundreds into a confetti of flavors and colors -- and then divvy them up into small bags as gifts for the holiday season. It always reminded me of tasty broken glass. I really should get the recipe -- and I believe you have to get oils for the flavors, not extracts.

It was always a fun day -- rock candy day. Probably 15 people would gather and chatter and gossip and tease and sneak pieces of candy -- and then Grandma Kernstock, after all that hard work with her boiling pots fo candy, would cook a really fine old fashioned german meal, complete with baked hams and sauerkraut and pickled vegetables from their garden.

Not sure if this was the sort of tale you were interested in hearing...but boy it's a nice memory from my past.

Yup, we have several displays at every science fair at Sparky's school...it didn't occur to me that you could flavor it; I'd always assumed that it required scary chemicals, as sugar can be a right bastard - crystallizing when you don't want, not when you do. I've always wondered if the flavorings were added in the same way they're added to a snow cone: that they're dipped in some kind of flavored-sugar solution that dries on the crystals.

At any rate, this Christmas Gourmet ran a recipe for mint or raspberry lollipopsthat I really wanted to try: it might be fun to experiment with that as a starting point. At best, it will crystallize the way you want, and at worst, you might be able to dip plain crystals into it...