Sea Foam Candy Failure

This video is a perennial favorite, mainly because I have been trying to make Sea Foam Candy for approximately fifty years and have NEVER had it turn out. No matter how closely I follow the recipe, when I make it, it tastes carbonized and scorched, or else so gummy and sad that your first impulse is to spit it out.

It was brave and good-hearted of this woman to post this disaster, which is quite dramatic after all, and could have been even worse if she had spilled any of this molten lava on herself. Liquefied sugar has the power to dissolve human flesh. There are sixty million YouTube videos showing you how to make this "simple" candy (and it IS simple, if you only look at the ingredients). It's one of those things that is all method, in that the syrup must be cooked to exactly the right temperature before adding the baking soda. The woman even uses a candy thermometer here, so the temperature is exact, but it makes no difference whatsoever.

This woman is right to call the recipe a "science experiment", for the seething sugar slurry (which inevitably calls for a tablespoon or two of vinegar) combines with a spoonful of baking soda to create something like one of those volcanoes we used to make for a middle school science project. The baking soda, a caustic substance, is dumped in all at once and stirred violently to prevent the whole thing from overflowing the pot onto the counter. Molten sugar is a particularly evil substance, cooking down ever more thickly and darkly, until the sudden violent injection of thousands of tiny gas bubbles triggers a fulminating monsoon. 

But the worst aspect of this evil stuff isn't the method, or even the success or failure of the result. Even the best sea foam candy (or sponge toffee or honeycomb or yellow man - yes, it really is called that in Ireland for some reason) leaves you with a nasty surprise. Once you have chewed your way down through all the sticky sweetness, you're left with a bitter, metallic, even caustic taste in your mouth, as if you've taken fireplace ashes and mixed them with Comet cleanser. It's the baking soda, and if you keep on chewing you're left with a hard little nub of it. How delightful. Let me wash out my mouth now.

I had a wonderful Nigella Lawson video on this, and now I can't find it. She said this was a "Cornish" recipe (baloney!), and that the original name was "hokey-pokey". Myself, I thought that was a dumb dance you did at wedding receptions, but never mind. Nigella was remarkably smug as she cooked up the "gol-den cah-ra-mell" on the stove, then snuck naughty little bites of it while in the back of the limousine on her way to the dinner party. I just couldn't relate. Just how does she deal with that nasty little nub, the Revenge of the Science Project, as "hokey-pokey" inevitably turns back into the caustic chemicals from which it was created?

Weird shit in the lab!

The first time I saw this one, I thought, duhh-y, duhh-y, duhh-y, like Bugs Bunny in the cartoons. Now it's the twentieth time, and I'm still saying it. I realize, yes, that it's some sort of science experiment, that it's probably perfectly safe, but why does it take place on a cookie sheet? Is it meant to be edible? Some new form of calamari, perhaps?

This one is even more volatile and mysterious. It just puts out these - things. I don't understand science, don't understand how anything can even "be", and then something like this comes along! Satanic, if you ask me. Black magic. The Republicans would be against it, for sure.

This one goes on for about half a minute. Not sure how that can be, because gifs have an outside limit of fifteen seconds, but maybe in the Land of Kraken, the usual rules are suspended. All I know is, my blog is having a hard time playing these things and I've already had to re-gif and substitute several times.  My blog is trying to spit them out!  Just a coincidence? I. . . DON'T. . . THINK. . . SO!

This is a truly horrible experiment by that Mad Russian guy, whoever he is, KGB Guy or whatever, the one who made the floating candle floating in kerosene. It looks as if the yard is about to explode. Don't try this at home. Don't try this, EVER.

A mere science experiment, or a new life form in the microwave?  You decide.

(Mad Scientist's Note. I had to cut about half of these because they stopped playing. So if the rest of them won't play, it's the Mysterious Ghost of Pharaoh's Snake or the Kraken Kreature, or whatever, or else the gifs are too long (which makes no sense because the longest one plays fine). Sometimes I just have trouble with these things, other times not. It's kind of like my lumbar region. Hope these are sufficient to gross you out.)

Big Bang, little fizzle

I have completely lost the text to this. What a horrible feeling. It just. . . went away. What I was GOING to say is that this reminds me of some bizarre experiment on The Big Bang Theory. We have contests at our house about the theme song: how fast you can sing it, word-perfect. So, sigh, here are the words:

Our whole universe was in a hot, dense state
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started - wait -
The earth began to cool, the autotrophes began to drool
Neanderthals developed tools, we built a wall
(We built the pyramids!)
Math, science, history
Unravelling the mystery
That all started with a big bang
BANG!!!

I get stuck on "developed" (invented?) and "unravelling" (examining?). Who cares anyway? There's no prize.

It's Friday and I lost my text and hardly anyone reads this shit anyway, so why don't I just quit?

P. S. this only gets interesting around 1:27. Before that it's all setup.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm