Turning styrofoam into cinnamon candy

This video has been sponsored by nebula over the years. I've made a lot of videos where I turn completely inedible things into food and some of my favorite transformations have been things like

turning

plastic gloves into hot sauce and paint thinner into cherry soda, something I've always wanted to try

turning

into, though. the

styrofoam

into

cinnamon

candy

and like all my other transformations this may not make sense immediately, however at least in theory it should be possible and this is because

styrofoam

is made from a The plastic known as polystyrene, which in turn is constructed from a set of smaller molecules known simply as styrene, in itself styrene is an interesting chemical, but what I think is more interesting is that it looks strikingly similar to this, which is the natural chemical substance. which gives

cinnamon

its smell and flavor, the only difference is that the cinnamon flavor known as Malahide has this little part on top, but other than that, it's pretty much the same and it's really strange that such a change so small could make it go from being a potential carcinogen to tasting like cinnamon, but either way, the moment I saw this I felt like it had to be possible to turn one into the other and the plan that popped into my head was Relatively simple, all you had to do was get some Styrofoam and somehow break it down into styrene, use a little chemistry to convert it to cinnamon flavor, and then use it to make a hopefully tasty cinnamon

candy

.

The only unfortunate part was that doing this in real life was going to be much more difficult. and I wasn't even sure if it would work but like always I thought there was only one way to find out but anyway to get started the first thing I was going to need was some styrofoam and by chance when I was cleaning things. At the beginning of the week I found this whole bag of police officers. I actually have no idea where I got them from or why I had them but I definitely wasn't using them for anything else and I felt like they were perfect for this project so I decided to go ahead and use them and the first thing I was going to have to do was get all the air out of them, this is because Styrofoam in general is actually mostly air and although this cup looks and feels solid, there was at least about 95% empty space, all this empty space actually makes it a Pretty good insulator and makes it work great for keeping things hot or cold but in my case this extra bulk was a problem so I was going to have to get rid of it which luckily was pretty easy and all I had to to do was take this big plate and add a bunch of acetone nail polish remover.

I then went to get the cup and put it down carefully and almost immediately I could see that it was releasing a lot of little air bubbles, it also made a very nice bubbling noise which I thought was kind of satisfying and as I kept pushing the acetone melted away. I was eating it slowly and then for the next 15 seconds the whole process. The cup gradually disappeared and I was finally left with this little puddle of Goo. At this point, what I had was also clearly nothing like the Styrofoam that IID started with, but what I think is interesting is that no chemical reaction had actually occurred, it was still exactly the same as Styrofoam. which is made of a plastic called polystyrene and the only difference is that it is no longer inflated with air, this is because acetone is capable of partially dissolving the polystyrene, which softens it and allows all the air to pass through. escaping this left me with a bunch of plastic that took up at least 9.5% less space and what I had to do next was just add the rest of the cops so I kept adding them one by one but I quickly got stuck.

I realized that doing so seemed like it was going to take a long time and instead I started adding a bunch at once. The good thing was that they still seemed to melt as quickly as a single cup and again I couldn't help but find this process. Oddly enough, it's satisfying, however, something I should mention is that even though there was no reaction here, there was still a lot of acetone vapor being released and having an open solvent like this is a huge fire risk, plus the sticky substance It itself is absolutely horrible when set on fire because it sticks to everything and something very similar to this is used to make modern Napal, but that being said, when the last cups finally disappeared, I was left with this huge mass of Styrofoam that like Lo that I just mentioned was super flammable and very sticky, however this was because it was completely soaked with acetone and to turn it into something I could actually work with I was going to have to dry it, so I quickly poured out as much of the acetone as possible. . as I could and then dumped all this goo onto a large baking sheet.

I also did my best to spread it as evenly as possible and again I feel it's important to mention that this was a huge fire hazard, but no way, all I had to do now was let it sit there and wait for the acetone to set. evaporated and after a few days this was what I was left with on the outside, it looked nice and dry but what was a little annoying was that the inside was still quite soft and sticky, this told me that if I ever wanted it to dry I was totally going to have to start breaking it down and luckily this was pretty easy, it also had a really interesting texture and in my opinion felt like taking apart a fresh quesadilla when I finally felt like I had broken it down enough. .

I let it dry for a few hours and then went back and broke it again. I then repeated this process. a few more times and left it overnight to dry completely and in the morning I was left with some nice dry pieces of Styrofoam, the only problem was that they were still too big and what I really wanted was some nice powder , so I just threw it away. I put them all in a blender, then turned it on high and they immediately started falling apart. It also worked even better than I thought and after just a couple of minutes it already looked like it was a decent blender. powder, the only part I really didn't like was that I started to see some acetone vapor condensing on the sides of the blender.

I really thought all the acetone was gone but clearly there was still some left and this was annoying and this is potentially really dangerous because if there was enough left it could cause everything to gum up again and in theory it could also ignite and cause the blender to crash. explode, so I made the decision almost immediately to stop it and what I had to do. The next thing was to take a closer look. I had to make sure stopping it early didn't leave a bunch of big chunks and it was actually a lot better than I expected.

It was also exactly what I expected and was just a nice stack of powdered Styrofoam and definitely took up a lot less volume than all the cups I started with. The most important thing is that it was now in a form that was actually usable and after more than a week of waiting, the time finally came. I tried to turn this plastic into an amazing cinnamon flavor, so I decided to start right away and the first thing I What I was going to have to do was break down all this polystyrene back into just styrene, according to a little research this worked too.

It doesn't seem too difficult and I was able to find some people on YouTube who had already done it and I even found this really helpful article that describes the process in detail. This article also suggested using a catalyst called magnesium oxide which I thought was kind of interesting and I really wanted to try it so I decided to do it and the first step was to get a flask and carefully pour all my crunchy polystyrene powder in and on top I added 65 G of magnesium oxide which As I said before was supposed to act as a catalyst, in theory it probably would have been a good idea to mix it in but I didn't really think it was necessary and honestly I was feeling a little lazy so I just cleaned up quickly.

The flask and I got rid of the loose powder and started putting together the rest of the setup to make this. I first added a short path capacitor to the middle neck and sealed the other two with some plugs because I wasn't going to need them. Then at the other end of the condenser I connected a vacuum adapter and a flask and with all this in place the setup was very close to complete, the only other thing I had to do was place a heating blanket under the flask. reaction and to connect some water lines to the condenser and at this point it was ready, so when I felt it was ready I just turned on the heater and waited for it to warm up nicely for a while, although it really didn't.

It seemed like there was a lot going on and for the next 15 minutes all he did was cringe a little. When I saw this, I started to worry a little that I had ruined things by not properly mixing the catalyst, but almost right then, I was greeted with a nice little puff of smoke. A lot more smoke then followed which began to fill the entire setup and I felt this was a good sign because it showed me that something was happening for sure and the Styrofoam was clearly starting. As far as I know, this was mostly just happening because of the heat causing the long polymer chains of the plastic to slowly separate at the same time, although the whole magnesium oxide catalyst was supposed to be helping with this. process and make it much faster, the only unfortunate part was that at this point it didn't look like any of this smoke was actually styrene and I think it was mostly smaller fragments of polystyrene to break it up completely and get individual molecules. of styrene I was going to have to keep heating it and let it cook a little more, so I kept going and as it slowly approached 400 C or 752 Fahrenheit it started to produce a little bit of liquid, which was very nice to see because in theory this was supposed to be mainly styrene and now I basically just had to wait so I let it sit there and over the next few hours I slowly collected a cloudy yellow liquid, although eventually it stopped coming out completely and when I looked in the other flask I saw There was practically nothing left, now it was just a pile of black crust that was probably mainly the catalyst along with a small amount of tar.

This was a very good sign that almost everything had converted and at this point the reaction was definitely over so I turned off the entire heater and went back to the other flask which was filled with my beautiful yellow liquid, as I mentioned before it was supposed to which was mainly styrene and I was very happy with how. I got a lot, but considering pure styrene is clear and colorless, it was obviously filled with a bunch of other junk. I was definitely going to have to clean it up a bit and to start this off I quickly poured it all into a separatory funnel. then made it separate into two layers where the bottom one, as far as I know, was mostly water and I'm not entirely sure where it came from, although it didn't really matter because it was all just junk and to get rid of.

I drained it quickly and it left me with a yellow liquid that was still as dirty as before and to continue cleaning it I poured it all into a beaker and then I started adding a bunch of white powder called sodium sulfate and hoped it would take out the water that was still there. could be there. I was also hoping this would remove all the cloudiness and when I came back to it about 20 minutes later it was nice and crystal clear. Which made me very happy to see, the only unfortunate thing was that the sodium sulphate hadn't magically removed the yellow color and there was obviously still a lot of rubbish in here so I was still going to have to clean it up a bit. more and to do this I started by pouring it into a funnel that had some cotton in the bottom, this would block any sodium sulfate that I might have accidentally transferred and it would all filter straight into a new round bottom flask and then when everything finally went through , I ditched the funnel and quickly put together the exact same setup as before, the only difference this time was that I included a thermometer which in this case was going to be extremely important with everything in place.

Then I started it. I turned on the heating and in just a few minutes it had already started to boil, there was also some vapor traveling quickly through the column and when it finally reached the condenser I started to collect some colorless, crystalline drops of liquid, this was really good for Mira, because showed me that the distillation was definitely removing that nasty yellow stuff, except the sad thing was that it wasn't actually styrene, it was just a random by-product and I knew it because the temperature on the thermometer was only around 40ºC. C and this told me that the vapor coming out was barely warm, it wasn't even hot enough to be styrene, that it would be well above 100°C and that I was just going to have toWait for the temperature to rise slowly. so I sat there watching it gradually build up more and more clear liquid and when it finally got to around 100C it started to look a little milky.

It was also at this point that I started to get more and more nervous that the temperature just wouldn't change. It kept increasing and that somehow there was no styrene here and I probably worried like that for most of my distillations; However, eventually, fortunately, it ended up stopping exactly at 142c or 288 Fen, which was extremely close to the boiling point of styrene. He told me that now everything that was coming out was probably almost pure styrene, so I quickly got rid of this flask that was full of junk and replaced it with a new one at the bottom of this flask.

I also included a very small amount of something called four-turb catacol which would help stabilize the styrene and prevent it from spontaneously turning into polystyrene, but anyway at this point I just had to wait a little longer and for the next 30 minutes all the styrene It was slowly distilled during this time. I also watched the temperature carefully and when it started to rise again I knew the distillation was over so I turned off the heating and carefully took out the flask and what I had now was just a bunch of nice clear liquid and it was kind of strange.

To think this used to be a bunch of styrofoam cops, that said, although based on the smell and boiling point alone I was 99.9% sure it was styrene, but to be 100% sure I was going to have to do it. I did a couple of tests, these tests were also relatively quick and I only had to run a small amount through these two little instruments that I have, where the first one does something called FTI and the second one does something called hnmr. Then I got these results which may or may not mean absolutely anything to you, but together they told me that this was most certainly styrene and that it was relatively pure, so now knowing this I was able to move on to the next step and what I think is interesting is that a Even though all this styrene smelled like plastic and gave me a headache, in theory it was pretty close to cinnamon flavor.

It was actually just one step away and the only thing I was missing was this little section here which meant that of course I was going to have to add it in somehow and although it didn't seem too complicated it was going to be the hardest part with a simple Google search, although I quickly found this on Wikipedia, which claimed it was possible to use something. Unfortunately finding an actual procedure wasn't that easy but after searching for a while luckily I was able to find one in this paper and it was even better than I expected so I decided to go ahead and give it a try and to start I bought a flask new and added 70 ml of a solvent called dimethylformamide or DMF for short, then added a stirring plate and a large plate full of ice and added it. bar I also turned on the stirring and added a thermometer as well as an addition funnel and a stopper with all this in place then I had to wait for the DMF to cool and in the meantime I went looking for another chemical called phosphorus oxychloride Honestly, this is A horrible chemical and it is very corrosive and toxic, but it was exactly what I needed to make my cinnamon flavor and I added about 37 G to the addition funnel.

I then carefully sealed the top and went to take a I looked at the thermometer and it was extremely difficult to see but it showed that the DMF was now below 10°C, this meant it was ready and when I felt it was ready I carefully opened it the addition funnel and released the phosphorus oxychloride. I then did my best to adjust it so that it added at a slow but steady rate and what I had to do now was simply watch the temperature closely to make sure it never went above 20°C, this is because if this happened The reaction could potentially get out of control and while it wouldn't just explode or something, it could cause everything to boil over, what I did think was kind of interesting was that it didn't really seem like much was happening and it almost seemed like it was adding water to more water, however, in theory, the nasty phosphorus oxychloride was supposed to react and combine with the DMF to form a new molecule known as the VSM reagent.

This was supposed to be the main active ingredient. in this reaction and in just a few minutes it will make a lot more sense why I do it with that said when everything was finally added I got rid of the addition funnel and what I had to do next was just let I stir it a little to make sure everything I had reacted while waiting, although it was the perfect time to go get all the styrene I just made and measure the amount I needed when I was first applying this. I was really tempted to risk it all and use it all, but at the same time I knew it was a horrible idea.

This is because there have been too many times where the reaction has simply failed me completely and considering I've never done it before. I did this before, I didn't really have confidence so in the end I decided to just use 27 and 2 Ms of styrene which was about one of what I had and this would give me a couple more tries if this ended up being said. That said, it was a complete failure. At this point the VSM reagent was definitely ready and the next step was to slowly add all the styrene, so I started by pouring in just a small amount and at first it really didn't seem like much.

It really seemed like it was going to be another step where it would feel like I was mixing water with water, except it eventually started to change color, this told me that there was definitely some kind of reaction and in theory the styrene should have been attacking the Vilsmeier reagent and forming a bond with it, this would lead to the formation of this new intermediate which was basically a combination of both molecules and was now starting to look a little more like cinnam alahh, which I also thought was The interesting thing was that this intermission technically had a second form that existed at the same time and this will be important later, but anyway what I had to do next was make sure everything reacted completely here and to do that I was going to have to warm up.

I turned it up so I quickly took out all the ice and replaced it with some water and added another thermometer. Then I turned up the heat and as it got hot the color gradually changed to orange and then something like that. It looked like tasty cranberry juice, of course, it was still just a bunch of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals and despite how good it looked, it would have been an absolutely horrible idea to try it, but anyway it finally came to 55c and okay with the procedure this was when it was supposed to suddenly start to heat up, he also said that it could potentially get so hot that it needed to be cooled down, but for some reason that didn't seem to happen, it looked like it was slowly getting darker, which he said I noticed which was definitely reacting more so I gave it about half an hour to make sure it didn't cause some kind of mess and when it seemed safe I turned the temperature up even more and then it continued to heat up slowly and throughout the process. over the next 45 minutes it got even darker, in fact by the time it got to around 75°C it was almost blocked and at this point the reaction was probably very close to being done just to be absolutely sure that everything had reacted, although I had than leave it.

I sat like that for another hour when I came back to him. I was a little surprised to see that it had gotten even darker and was now ready to move on to the final step of the reaction, so I quickly took this whole setup apart and poured everything into a beaker that was surrounded by ice, this is because that what I had to do now was more or less the opposite of the previous St step and I had to cool it down as much as possible. I was going to have to get it as close to zoc as I could and while I was waiting I also had to mix up another solution so I went and got a beaker and added 340 M of water followed by 133.5 G of something called hydrated sodium acetate .

Then I started mixing it to get it dissolved and after just a few minutes practically everything was gone with this done. I was able to go back and check the other things that during this time had partially solidified when I saw this, I was a little worried that this might be a problem but at the same time I thought it was probably fine, it was also around zc which was exactly what I wanted and decided to go with it, so I started by adding a very small amount of sodium acetate solution and almost immediately. Immediately, thankfully, it began to loosen.

I was really happy to see this, but at the same time it also started to get a little warm and I had to make sure it stayed cool. What was supposed to be happening here was quite exciting and all the water that was in the solution I was adding should have been attacking the intermediate from before, more specifically, it should have been attacking this form of the intermediate, causing a part of it to was expelled and led to the formation of the end. cinnam aldhy also as a side note, all the sodium acetate that was in the solution I was adding not only did nothing and was there to act as something called a buffer that would help keep the pH constant and this was very important for this reaction when I finally finished adding it, I let it stir for a little longer and when it seemed like the color stopped changing, I took it out of the ice bath and then carefully placed it into a hot water bath that I had preheated. to 75c because again apparently I had to heat it up, however luckily this was going to be the last time I had to do this and just to be absolutely sure everything reacted this way I could get as much out of it as possible. of the cinem aldah heide as possible, I mean, assuming the reaction was actually working, when I came back to it about 15 minutes later, it looked pretty much the same and the only difference was that it seemed to be a bit clearer at this point, Although it should have finally been done and the only thing left to do was put it in the refrigerator and let it cool.

Then I left it overnight and in the morning when I opened the door I almost immediately felt a really nice smell of cinnamon at the same time, I was also very excited and a little surprised by what I saw because on the surface it now looked like a layer thick of oil, it was quite possible that this was almost entirely cinnam aldhy and it was really good. sign, the only unfortunate part was that all of this potential cinam alahh looked black and was clearly filled with a bunch of nasty crap, so although it was a little tempting, trying it like this would have been an absolutely horrible idea and I wasn't definitely going to have to cleaning it up on the plus side was supposed to be a relatively simple process and the first step was to pour it all into a separatory funnel, on top of this I then poured 100 Ms of a solvent called diethyl. ether which could immediately be mixed with the oily layer on top, then I sealed it with a stopper, carefully removed it from the stand and started shaking it.

I was doing this to try to force the diyl ether and water to mix, which should help The Ether get out any cinnam aldhy that might have been trapped in the water. When I finally felt like I had shaken it enough, I placed it back on the stand and over the next few minutes it separated again into two layers this time. the bottom water layer was much clearer which was good and told me that the ether had probably taken out some of the cinnam alahh. With this in mind, I then carefully drained all this red water and took the ether oil mixture that was left in.

I took the funnel and poured it into a beaker, then put all the water back into the separatory funnel and added a little ether and repeated exactly the same extraction process four more times. I was doing this just to make sure I got absolutely everything out and when I was done I was left with a glass full of a nice red liquid, most of it was just all the ether I had added and only a small amount was the oil I really wanted, but The important thing was that it was already much cleaner than what I had started with, the only unfortunate thing was that there was probably still a lot of rubbish that I was going to have to get rid of and to start with this, I had to throw it all away.

Back into a separatory funnel, I then poured 100Ms of normal water which almost immediately turned yellow and this told me it was definitely getting out a lot of particular rubbish, although I was really hoping it was removing any DMF that was in the mix. of original reaction and that was surely picked up by The Ether. I also wanted to be absolutely sure that all this DMF was gone before continuing and the easiest way to do this was to simply wash it with a large amount of water, so I decided to repeat this same wash five more times, which should have been more than enough and in the end the water was almostcolorless, which meant I probably wasn't getting much of anything anymore and I quickly drained off all the water which then I took all my slightly less red liquid and transferred it all to a flask and prepared it for a distillation.

Then I turned up the heat and was doing this to get rid of all the ether and just a few minutes later. It was already boiling after that, it only took me about 30 seconds to start collecting some crystalline ether in the glass and now I just had to wait for everything to pass, although this wasn't going to take long and only about 20 minutes later. was pretty much done, what was left in the flask was now a super dark, sticky liquid and again, it didn't really look like it, but in theory it was cleaner than the oil I started with to get pure cinnam, although there was only A bit more cleanup to do and I felt the easiest way to do it was to just do another distillation, so I just carefully transferred everything to a much smaller flask and quickly put together pretty much the same setup, the only slight difference this time . was that instead of collecting everything in a beaker or a single flask, I was going to have to use three flasks and I also had to connect a vacuum line, all these extra things made it seem much more complicated, but it was still more or less the same and it will all make sense in a bit in any case, when I felt it was ready I turned on my vacuum pump and carefully removed all the air from the setting, I also turned up the heating and just a few minutes later I saw that it was already starting brought to a boil, steam was also beginning to rise from the flask and it wasn't long before it began to collect a nice, colorless liquid.

This was very exciting and I was very happy to see that it wasn't a nasty red color except Like last time I knew for sure that unfortunately it was just rubbish, this is because when I looked at the thermometer I saw that it was only around 30 °C, which was still too low to be cine Malahide, although the temperature was continually increasing, which was good and I just had to wait patiently until it reached the boiling point of cinem alahh. The only tricky part was that because this was all done in a vacuum, the boiling point of the Malahide cinnam was going to be much lower than its normal temperature. of 248 C or 478 Fahrenheit, it would probably be around 100 C or 212 Fahrenheit, which was a value I got using this online calculator, but it was very difficult or even impossible to predict perfectly.

This worried me a little. I was having trouble telling it apart from the garbage I had to separate it from, but there really wasn't much I could do about it. It was also not an option at all to do it without a vacuum cleaner and in the presence of air because this caused much of the Malahide cinnam to simply oxidize and be destroyed, so all I could do was continue to wait patiently and watch the temperature and hope that it would magically clear up. stopped at 100 C, however, long story short, that didn't happen and it ended. pass it and stop at 125c which was much higher than I expected as I just mentioned although the boiling point under vacuum is always difficult to predict and it was quite possible that cinem aldhy was overshooting which also made me think this .

It was that when I looked at it much closer it seemed to be slightly yellow like pure cinnam aldhy and I decided to commit to it, so I carefully twisted the end of the setup, which allowed me to change the flat without releasing the vacuum and now I was separating completely this fraction, then I continued collecting this yellow oil and carefully observing the temperature and over the next hour the flask slowly filled at some point, although the temperature suddenly dropped, which told me that some higher boiling point was going to start. To appear. When I looked at the original flask again, it looked like all that was left was some red trash.

At this point the distillation was over and I was pretty sure that what I now had was some nice, relatively clean cinnam alahh, the only part that worried me the most was that it was definitely a lot more yellow than it should be. cinnam alahh pure and the idea of ​​trying it like that honestly made me feel uncomfortable, so to be safe and reassure myself, unfortunately I was going to have to do it. I cleaned it up some more and to do this I quickly prepared this fresh, clean distillation setup. I then turned up the heat and it really didn't take long before a few drops started falling and this time I decided to collect a decent amount early. changing the flasks this would really ensure that I got rid of any impurities and when I felt I had sacrificed enough I changed it to the second one, what I was collecting now should have been extremely pure cinnam alahh and what was very nice What I saw was that it definitely It was much less yellow.

So I went ahead and waited for the temperature to drop suddenly and when I saw this happen I quickly switched it to the third flask, I also turned off the heating and the vacuum pump and at this point I was finally done after weeks of work. I now had the beautiful pale yellow oil I was expecting and carefully began transferring it all into a vial. While doing this, I also almost immediately received a super nice, sweet taste. It smelled like cinnamon and now I was almost 100% sure that this was pure cinnam alahh, however if I was going to test it of course I would have to be absolutely sure so I went ahead and ran some tests like the styrene I did an FTI and a hnmr and this is what they gave me again, it may not mean anything but together they showed me that this was safe cinam Malahide and that it was quite pure and I was very happy to see this. because now, after all this work, I could finally try it and wouldn't have to worry too much about it killing me instantly.

Although I have to say that there was still a chance that it contained something horrible that wouldn't show up on the NMR and it's generally not a good idea to try any homemade chemicals, but either way I just scooped out a small amount and sucked it into my mouth. , okay, definitely cinnamon, but it tastes good, right? It burns almost as much as I thought pure cinnamon oil would and is also a little sweet. Every other flavor I've tried either tastes horrible or, oddly, burns my mouth even when it's supposed to taste like grapes or something, but this is supposed to burn. and it doesn't even burn that much, it's kind of interesting, okay, so sure it had some nice, tasty cinnamon oil, but the most important thing is that it was finally time to try to make some sweets specifically with it, although I really wanted to make a little cinnamon.

Hearts have always been one of my favorite sweets and I wanted them to be as similar as possible to the classics I grew up with. The only tricky part was that I quickly discovered that making them this way was much more difficult. than I thought and it was also going to be extremely expensive, however, long story short, I ended up spending an obscene amount of money and a couple of months later I was the proud owner of this custom candy making machine, more precisely, although in It was mostly just the rolling pins that were personalized and there were little hearts carved into each of them, they were also the exact size and shape I wanted them to be and at this point it may not be very obvious how this is used to make candy, but it will That said, it made a lot more sense in a few minutes.

Now that I had the machine I was finally able to start and the first step was to get a pot with a thermometer and then in it I poured half a cup of water followed by 2 cups of regular table sugar and 1/4 cup of corn syrup, apparently this was all that was needed to make hard candies and from what I could see the only difference between most of the recipes was the ratio of each ingredient, the specific recipe that I was using was from this video made by the lab of flavors from the channel and I felt like it looked good, but anyway with everything added, I mixed it quickly and when I finally felt like it looked good and I even turned on the stove and turned up the heat, then I just had to leave it and wait for it to be heated and carefully observe the thermometer, this is because as it was heated and the water in it slowly evaporated, the temperature was supposed to rise slowly in accordance with the temperature.

Flavor Lab Video, This would gradually take the candy through several stages, where the first was known as softball. However, what I needed was a hard crack which would occur between 90 and 310 F and this would give me a hard candy like a lollipop, so I just let it go and over the next 20 minutes the temperature slowly increased and finally reached the 290 mark I decided to let it go a little longer until about 300 Fahrenheit and the moment I saw this happen I turned off the heat and got rid of the thermometer at this point the base caramel should have been ready and it was time to give it some flavor, so I went to get all my precious cinnamon oil and carefully took out 3.7 Ms, which ended up being most of it.

I then quickly shot it into the still super hot sugar and thought it was interesting to watch it just sit on top and basically do nothing, however this was only because the boiling point of Malahide cinnam was much higher than 300 fhe and with most of applying the other flavors in this way would probably be a bad idea, regardless of the fact that he was now very close to finishing and there was only one last but extremely important ingredient to add, this was of course a potentially carcinogenic red dye that was absolutely essential. To make a proper cinnamon candy and I felt like several drops would be enough, I then mixed it quickly and in less than a minute it was a nice red color but I wanted it to be even stronger so I added a bunch more after this.

I was actually able to get the exact red color I was looking for and at this point things were looking very good. However, I was starting to feel a little nervous because what I had to do next was the really hard part and I was like I was worried I would completely ruin it, however, I chose to just not think about it, took the sugar off the stove and quickly I poured it over some silicone. Then I started moving it around while it cooled and it was finally over. It was supposed to turn into something like bread dough, although that didn't happen and I completely screwed it up and instead of getting something that was soft and pliable, I got something that was filled with a bunch of hard bits.

The moment I saw this, I honestly started to panic and really started to worry because I had lost most of my cinnamon oil. It failed completely. It's as simple as that. I failed. You know, pack our bags. That's all. These are our sweets. This is. that's the cinnamon candy, what made things even worse was that I couldn't find anything about this online or how to fix it and it really seemed like I was going to have to restart at the same time, although I felt like there had to be a way to get back to melt it down without burning it or destroying it completely and I thought it was at least worth a try.

I also felt like I had to at least try to not just lose most of my cinnamon oil and in my mind the best first step was to very carefully separate out all the sugar, no this gave me some nice little bits that I could put back in. in the pot and then put this back on the stove, on top of this I also shot in a random amount of water as well as a completely arbitrary amount of corn syrup and turned up the heat. Then I just waited for it to melt and what I was hoping for here was that all the extra water would help keep the sugar from burning and the extra corn syrup would make it take longer to set, the only thing I was worried about was that heating it again might make it caramelize and when it reached 300 F it looked much foamier than before.

It also looked like it was turning brown, which really scared me, but it seemed like it was mainly because the food coloring was breaking down, so I just added a little extra red and mixed it in and very quickly all the foam disappeared. and it actually looked pretty good this time, although I wasn't going to let it cool at all and I almost immediately took it off the stove and started pouring it compared to before, it was definitely a lot more runny which I felt was good and I did my best thing was to move it constantly while doing this.

I was also still very worried that I would end up getting a bunch of solid chunks again, but that thankfully didn't happen. Instead, over the next few minutes, it slowly became thicker and eventually. I had pretty much exactly what I wanted, it was just a glob of sticky sugar that felt almost uncannily similar to warm bread dough, and I was glad to see that my recovery attempt had worked; unfortunately, there was almost no time to celebrate this because I still had to turn all this sugar goo into some cute cinnamon hearts before it cooled down and it was time to use my machine from what I saw online, it looked super toosimple, Ward, and I basically just had to throw it on the rollers and then flatten it and that's exactly what I did and for the most part it seemed to go pretty well and I was very happy to see some beautiful little hearts forming.

The only weird part was that it was a lot harder to turn than I thought and I think this was because the sugar I was putting in had cooled down too much, this needs to be anchored to the ground. I also could have gone too slow which was causing it to solidify and I was only able to crush half the sugar before it became too hard so I basically had to stop trying and honestly it was shocking how much I had ruined everything this process despite that, although it was not like that. like it was a complete failure because I was still able to get a bunch of little hearts and they were actually super nice to separate.

I also had to apply a little force and they all fell apart easily, which I thought was really satisfying. After that, I spent a couple of minutes separating the parts that were still stuck together and at this point I was very close to finishing, in theory there was only one last step left which was to cover the candies with more sugar and give them that classic look that I originally wanted. In fact, I had even bought an entire machine to help me do this, but after seeing how pretty they were without coding, I decided to keep them this way.

There was something I really liked about them like this and now. After months of working on this project, I'm finally done, I'm finally done and, uh, I think there's only one thing left to do after all this work. I can see if it was worth it. We'll see. It's okay, you know. I mean, I don't know why I'm surprised, it tastes exactly like cinnamon candy, it's really good, it's pretty much the exact flavor I wanted, not too much cinnamon or not enough, it's a very nice soft cinnamon candy, the only thing I think That threw me off, normally they just crunch, but this one is a little chewier, it's like uh, I just made cinnamon heart, Jolly Ranchers, basically.

H oh, that one was crunchy for some reason and more cinnamon. Okay, I need it. I made it clear that I needed to refine my candy skills, but overall, I'm honestly a little surprised at how good they turned out, so in the end and despite an almost impressive lack of candy-making skill, I think I can still call on this project a success. I mean, I was actually able to convert it. a bunch of old styrofoam cups into some pretty cinnamon candies and although they weren't exactly perfect I'm still very happy with them, what will also be fun is that in the future I plan to revisit this whole candy making process and I have at least a few projects that I think are going to be really interesting, however, in the meantime I'll be taking a little break from Candy and focusing on some more dangerous projects, like turning air into a bomb.

It's actually a video I was probably never going to make because I know YouTube definitely wouldn't like it, but I'm happy to say it's now possible thanks to Nebula who is also the sponsor of this video for anyone who hasn't made it yet . I've heard of Nebula, it's a creator-owned and operated video streaming service with content from hundreds of creators like Thought Emporium Taroo and Real Engineering. It also has a huge catalog of Nebula Originals including shows, movies and documentaries, as well as exclusive bonus content from many. creators and everything was delivered completely personally. I've been really enjoying wover Productions' travel series game called jet lag, the game that features many creators you may know participating in travel-related challenges around the world.

This show was also funded and produced. by nebula, which I think is really cool, especially since I'm now part of nebula as a nebula creator. I will be offering early access to new videos along with all my previous uploads including NY blue and the videos. which I had to delete from YouTube. I'll also eventually make a few more videos that I know YouTube won't like, like the one I mentioned before, but now thanks to Nebula I'm still excited to make them even though I know YouTube will probably demonetize it with all that said, though I really think Nebula It's a great platform, especially for the support they give to all their creators and I definitely recommend you check them out.

You can also do it right now by clicking. in my link in the description see. nebula.com is only 250 a month and a portion of this will directly support this channel and that's it, as always. Thank you very much to all my followers on Patreon. Everyone who supports me can watch all my new videos for at least 24 hours. before publishing them on YouTube You will also have access to all the old videos that I had to delete and if you support me with $5 or more you will get your name at the end as you see here e