Wildflower Writes

Ever wonder where cotton candy came from? Whenever you go to the fair, amusement park, or circus, you’re likely to see food vendors with blue and pink fluffy cotton candy, some in packages as large as a young child. The texture is soft, but sticks to the moisture of your fingers or tongue. In your mouth, it melts down to almost nothing, leaving a pure sweetness behind. Cotton candy has been around for a long time, although not in its current form. The Iranians created a confection called “Pashmak” from sugar and sesame oil, which was probably the predecessor to our modern day cotton candy. Pashmak means “like wool.” Recipes for spun sugar are found in European cookbooks back to the mid-eighteenth century. Confectioners would go to great lengths to carefully melt sugar and fling the floss like strands into carefully crafted shapes. They would create spun sugar nests for Easter and sugar webs to decorate desserts. In 1897 William Morrison and John Wharton patented a candy machine that pr...