Fairy Floss

To the French, it's papa's beard; in Germany, sugar wool, Great Britain says candy floss and in the good ol' USA, we say cotton candy.  However, my favorite name of all is the original - fairy floss! 

This super sweet treat is a favorite at fairs, carnivals, circuses and the like.  The kiddos flock and the parents usually cringe.  Not this parent though.  Maybe it's my super sweet tooth that supersedes common sense, but regardless of the reason, I love this sugar on a stick! Today, I'm celebrating the sticky stuff - spun sugar to be precise. 

1897 is the year it all began.  Two Tennesseans, William Morrison and John C. Wharton, have been given credit for creating the first electric machine to produce this sugary delight. These candy making men introduced what they called fairy floss to the world by taking their cylindrical centrifuge heating device on the road to the 1904 World's Fair. At an exuberant cost of 25 cents a serving, half of the fair admission price at the time, they sold a shocking 68,655 servings! The sugary goodness was an instant hit and has been ever since.

Interestingly, this cotton like candy, dubbed so in the 1920s, has served more than just a sugar fix.  Scientist have studied its unique transformation from one type of solid to a liquid to an entirely different solid form. By doing so, they have used cotton candy as a form or mold for developing artificial capillaries which could, when perfected, be used in artificial skin for burn victims.  Who knew?

I bet you also didn't know these quirky tidbits about fairy floss as well:

• each strand of cotton candy is a nanofiber, just 3/1000s of an inch across.
• a company called Gold Medal developed the current cotton candy machine in 1949 and still to this day makes almost 100 percent of all cotton candy machines.
• our fluffy fairy floss has its own holiday - December 7th is National Cotton Candy Day.
• a bag of cotton candy only contains about one to two tablespoons of sugar.
• even though this sweet treat is made from entirely sugar, a cone or bag of cotton candy contains less sugar and calories than a can of soda.

D'alto, Nick. "Ordinary Sugar, Extraordinary Science." Odyssey. Feb 2012, Vol. 21 Issue 2, p38-41.
Collier, Marcy L. "What's Candy Floss?" Fun For Kidz. Jan/Feb 2009, Vol. 8 Issue 1, p22-23.