Can what is, essentially, a kid's toy do a credible job of producing that sweetest, most ephemeral of childhood treats? Or will it overheat, explode, and cause grievous bodily harm? Will I finally stop pleading to be bought cotton candy whenever we go to sporting events because I can make my own? Will I ever stop asking questions and get on with it already?
Because I have finally figured how to get pictures up here without using Hello (I knew keeping that Yahoo! GeoCities page would eventually pay off), I can tell the story with photos.
Looking remarkably like the picture that I posted the other day, except in my kitchen, here is the magic machine itself:
You can see that I decided not to waste any time and I went right for the purple, grape-flavored cotton candy, thoughtfully made available to me by Target while briefly fighting the holiday shopping crowds today.
After 10 minutes of surprisingly annoying, grinding noise to warm it up, it was time:
In went the fairy dust...I mean, purple sugar...and almost immediately spidery strands of sugary goodness began to appear in the bowl, to be swept up with an authentic paper cone:
That one "rounded teaspoon" of sugar made quite a bit of candy, more than I was expecting, but certainly not enough to share. And what good is cotton candy if you can't share it and get someone else all sugared up? So in went a second teaspoon, which didn't make quite as much as the first teaspoon; I think the inner workings started to get a little gummed up, but it still functioned.
The end result:
I couldn't really get it to stay on the cone very successfully -- I think that's all in the wrist and I need a lot more practice -- so I piled it into a bowl and brought it out for sampling.
The verdict: Delicious!
It really does taste just like what you get out at the stadium, but even fresher and a heck of a lot less expensive. There's a SF 49ers game in my future, thanks to a generous birthday gift from a good friend, and I think I'll be whipping up a big ol' bag of for that outing thanks to this cool gift from another good friend. Guess it's easy to see what I was thankful for this year.
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