Tag: sweets

Carnival in your kitchen… and on your sofa… and in the carpet… and on the drapes…

Nostalgia Electrics Retro Series 50's Style Cotton Candy Machine

The carnival has packed up and is heading off into the sunset. The sounds of the midway are faint in the air. A slight breeze carries the scent of fried foods and roller coaster grease. You take a step forward, hoping to capture one last taste of the county fair and all that it has to offer. Instead, you find a sticky paper cone attached to the bottom of your sole; a piece of pink-stained detritus left over from the summer carnival.

Lucky for you, you can take that crumpled tube of paper and breath new life into it with your very own cotton candy machine. The Nostalgia Electrics Retro Series 50’s Style Cotton Candy Machine is a countertop appliance set to spin all year long. Just add sugar mixture and use the included reusable plastic cones to catch the freshly flossed cotton candy as it spins out of the machine. Now, that sticky and goopy mess that you thought you left out in the fairgrounds can finally be made at home. Lucky you.

Diving into candy coating

Sweet Coating Maker for the KitchenAid stand mixer

Candy is made in giant tumblers that coat nuts and other small ingredients in sugar. Just put in your ingredients and turn it on. Before you know it, you have a (great big) batch of candy. While most of us do not have the luxury of installing one of these people-sized machines in our home (or the need for that much candy), we can use the stand mixer to make some candy with this simple attachment.

The Sweet Coating Maker works with the KitchenAid stand mixer and is capable of producing 30 pounds of candy-coated sweetness per hour. The stainless-steel tumbler allows you to coat fruit, nuts, or other candy pieces in sugar or even chocolate and almond paste. With about a 16-inch diameter, the attachment is considerably smaller than its industrial cousins, making sure that it won’t take up too much room when not in use—or tempt us to dive in and candy-coat ourselves.

***UPDATE***
The link above no longer works, so give this one a spin: De Buyer Sweet Coating System

Batter Finger: It’s pointing! It’s pointing!

Batter Finger: Fred BATTERFINGER Cartoon Hand Spatula

Sometimes it’s not rude to point. Offering a friend or little one the chance to scrape the bowl after mixing up a batch of deliciousness definitely qualifies. The Batter Finger makes making cookies, cake and brownies even more fun. The opportunity to share never tasted so good.

The finger-shaped spatula features a long handle and flexible silicone end for easy use when creating sweet treats. Narrower than traditional spatulas, the Batter Finger can also be used to scrape out the last bit of peanut butter from the jar. Perfect, because doesn’t a peanut butter brownie sound really good just about now?

Brownies: No longer just for squares

Wilton Brownie Cup Pan

The Wilton Brownie Cup Pan takes brownie baking to a new level. Instead of using a regular 8-inch square pan, add a little fun (as if brownies needed more fun) to your brownie mix by baking them into handy cups. Fill with ice cream or frosting for a truly special treat. The nonstick steel pan produces six 3.5-inch brownie cups per batch. Although the indentation is an inch and a half deep, how high you stack your brownie is entirely up to you.

On-demand caramel apples: The Apple Dipper

Apple Dipper

Some people like to keep a dish of candy on a nearby side table. Whenever the candy craving hits, a sweet treat is never too far away. As practical as that may be, some people appreciate other sweets adorning their tabletops. Like caramel. Melted caramel.

The Apple Dipper is probably not intended as a perpetual sugar-dispensing device, but it does have that capability. Designed to melt caramel and keep it heated, the dipper is a fun way to create caramel apples. Turn it on, fill it up and dip away. Be careful though, with the ability to keep caramel in a continual ready-to-dip state, that candy dish is going to get jealous!