One hot and humid Saturday night I took my first class at the Institute for Culinary Education (ICE). They offer professional and recreational cooking classes.
I chose a lollipop making class. We covered several different sugar techniques including dipped, poured, and pulled treats.
The weather was ridiculously humid and unfortunately many of the item we made in class were very sticky and didn't set up properly. Below are the three treats that set up the best (and that were not eaten on my way home from class).
Of the three sugar treats pictured, I poured the Christmas tree looking lollipop and my group made the sugar used in the round lollipop.
In the class we were split in to 3 person teams; each team had 3 recipes to complete. The chef instructor made sure each team made something dipped, poured, and pulled so we learned the basics of working with sugar. We were sent home with copies of all of the recipes made in class and samples of each item made in class as well.
Pouring and dipping were the easiest ways to work with sugar. The pulling technique definitely needs practice to get even ribbons of candy. Plus there is a fine balance between keeping the sugar warm and pliable and not burning your fingers!
One of the teams in our class was a mom with two teenage daughters. The daughters bought the class as a Mother's Day gift. It was so cute to see them all working together. They made the green/yellow pulled sugar heart in the photo above. They started out just making penny candy sticks with the green and yellow, but there was so much sugar to work with they got creative. MomO would have enjoyed the class - I could see us not paying attention though and end up with some kind of sugar disaster instead of cute pulled sugar hearts.
(Spoiler alert) I bought some lollipop molds at the baking supply store the other day - I have grand plans for some really awesome Halloween lollipops!
