week 3, pin 3

Week of September 23rd:
 Blue "Crystal Meth" Rock Candy (Breaking Bad)
Pin Rating: Excellent for novelty
Cost: $20 (if you have to buy a  $10 candy thermometer, which I did)

Tonight is the series finale of Breaking Bad, so Panda and I decided to give BrBa a proper send-off by trying to make some "Blue Meth" of our own (out of granulated sugar and corn syrup, of course!) for our series finale party.

Our first cook didn't turn out as we hoped.  The recipe instructs you to remove the sugar mixture from heat when the thermometer reaches 285 degrees, but we did not quite do this in time, and within seconds we had over-cooked our candy. 

Even just slightly over-cooking it produced yellowed (or carmalized) candy, so when we added the blue food coloring, our candy turned green. Knowing Lydia would not be pleased, we decided we'd better try again.

For our 2nd cook, we removed the mixture from the heat a few degrees before the recipe called for us to in the hopes we wouldn't have the same green problem.

When we added the food coloring it looked a little green at first, so we added several more ( 5-7) drops of Betty Crocker's blue gel coloring.  We then worried it was going to be too dark, but thankfully it turned the perfect shade of blue!

After pouring the sugar mixture out on the lightly greased cookie sheet, we let it harden and cool for about an hour, it was easy to break apart. We put the broken pieces in a ziplock bag and pounded the candy with  a meat tenderizer until getting the right look.

Over all, I am SUPER PLEASED with this pin!   It was fun, easy, and a great way to send off Walt and Jesse.