Spun Sugar Nests
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Set two boxes on a flat surface, spaced apart to span your iron bars.
Lay four or five iron bars across the boxes.
Take a wire egg whisk and cut the wires so the ends hang loose.
Make the sugar syrup
In a saucepan, cook sugar, glucose, and water to 300°F (150°C).
Remove from heat and set the mixture on the flat surface.
Spin and shape
Dip the wire ends into the sugar mixture and swing back and forth over the bars.
Collect the fine strings that hang down and shape them into nests.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Sugar
- Forms the structure of the fine sugar strings as it cools and hardens.
- Glucose
- Slows crystallization so the syrup stays smooth and the strings stay pliable.
- Water
- Dissolves the sugar so it can be cooked to a clear, workable syrup.
The step that matters
Cooking the syrup to 300°F (150°C). At this temperature the syrup has very little water left and sets hard as it cools. Undercooked syrup stays sticky and will not form strings, while overcooked syrup can turn bitter or brown.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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