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 that I've been always wanting to do though is to try and turn styrofoam into cinnamon candy and just like all of my other Transformations this might not immediately make sense however at least in theory it should be possible and this is because styrofoam is made from a plastic known as polystyrene which in turn is built from a bunch of smaller molecules known just as styrene on its own styrene is kind of an interesting chemical but what I think is more interesting is that it looks surprisingly similar to this which is the naturally occurring chemical that gives cinnamon its smell and flavor the only difference is that the cinnamon flavor known cin Malahide has this small little part at the top but other than that it's pretty much the same and it's really weird that such a small change can make it go from being a potential carcinogen to tasting like cinnamon but either way the moment that I saw this I felt that it had to be possible to turn one into the other and the plan that I came up with in my head was relatively simple all I had to do was get some styrofoam and somehow break it down back into styrene use some chemistry to turn it into cinnamon flavor and then use that to make some hopefully tasty cinnamon candy the only unfortunate part was that doing this in real life was going to be a lot more difficult and I wasn't even sure if it would work but as usual I figured there was only one way to find out but anyway to get started the first thing that I was going to need was some styrofoam and just by chance when I was cleaning things up earlier in the week I had found this entire bag of cops I actually have no idea where I got them from or why I even had them but I definitely wasn't using them for anything else and I felt that they were kind of perfect for this project so I decided to just go ahead and use them and the first thing that I was going to have to do was get all the air out of them this because Styrofoam in general is actually mostly air and even though this cup look looked and felt solid it was at least around 95% empty space all of this empty space actually makes it a pretty good insulator and it makes it work really well to keep things hot or cold but in my case this extra volume was a problem so I was going to have to get rid of it which was thankfully pretty easy and all I had to do was get this large dish and to add a bunch of acetone nail polish remover I then went and got the cup and I carefully lowered it in and almost immediately I could see that it was releasing a bunch of small air bubbles it was also making a really nice fizzing noise which I thought was kind of satisfying and as I kept pushing on it it was slowly getting eaten by the acetone then over the next 15 seconds the entire cup gradually disappeared and eventually I was 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 reaction had actually taken place chemically it was still exactly the same thing is styrofoam which is made from a plastic called polystyrene and the only difference was that it was no longer puffed up with air this is because the acetone is able to partially dissolve the polystyrene which softens it and it allows all of the air to escape this then left me with a bunch of plastic that was taking up at least 9 5% less space and what I had to do next was just add the rest of the cops so I continued adding them one by one but I quickly realized that doing it like this was going to take a really long time and I instead started throwing in a bunch at once what was nice was that they still seem to melt away just as quickly as the single cup and again I couldn't help but find this process oddly satisfying however something that I should mention is that even though though there was no reaction going on here this was still letting off a bunch of acetone vapor and having an open solvent like this is a big fire hazard on top of that the goo itself is absolutely horrible when it lights on fire because it'll stick to everything and something very similar to this is used to make modern-day Napal but with that being said when the last cups eventually disappeared I was left with this huge blob of polystyrene which as just mentioned was super flammable and really sticky however this was just because it was completely soaked with acetone and to turn it into something that I could actually work with I was going to have to dry it out so I quickly poured off as much of the acetone as I could and then I dumped out all of this goo onto a large baking tray I also did my best to spread it out as evenly as possible and again I feel like it's important to mention that this was kind of a huge fire hazard but either way all I had to do now was just let it sit there and wait for the acetone to evaporate and after a few days this was what I was left with on the outside it looked like it was nice and dry but what was kind of annoying was that on the inside it was still pretty soft and gooey this told me that if I ever wanted it to fully dry I was going to have to start breaking it apart and this was thankfully pretty pretty easy it also had a really interesting texture and in my opinion it kind of felt like pulling apart a fresh quesadilla when I eventually felt that I'd split it apart enough I'd let it dry for a few hours and then I came back to it and split it apart again I then repeated this process a few more times and left it overnight to fully dry and in the morning I was left with some nice and dry chunks of polystyrene the only problem was that they were still way too big and what I really wanted was some nice powder so I just dumped them all into a blender I then turned it on to the max setting and they all immediately started getting torn apart it was also kind of working even better than I thought it would and after just a couple of minutes it already looked like it was a decent powder the only part that I really didn't like was that I started seeing some acetone Vapor condensing on the sides of the blender I really thought that all of the acetone was gone but clearly there was still some left over and this was both annoying and potentially really dangerous this because if there was enough left it could cause it all to gum up again and in theory it could also ignite and potentially caused the blender to explode so I made the decision to pretty much immediately stop it and what I had to do next was take a closer look at it I had to be sure that stopping it early didn't leave a bunch of huge chunks in it and it was actually way better than I expected it was also pretty much exactly what I was hoping for and it was just a nice pile of powdered polystyrene and it definitely took up way less volume than all of the cups that I started with most importantly though it was now in a form that was actually usable and after over a week of waiting it was finally time to try and turn this plastic into some hopefully amazing cinnamon flavor so I decided to just immediately start and the first thing that I was going to have to do was break down all of this polystyrene back into just styrene based on a little research this also didn't seem too difficult and I was able to find a few people on YouTube who had already done it and I even found this really useful article that outlined 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 out so I decided to just go for it and the first step was to get a flask and to carefully pour in all of my crispy polystyrene powder then on top of this I added 65 G of magnesium oxide which as I said before was supposed to act as a catalyst theoretically it probably would have been a good idea to mix it in but I didn't really think that it was necessary and honestly I was feeling a bit lazy so instead I just quickly cleaned up the flask and got rid of any loose powder and I started putting together the rest of the setup to do this I first added a short path condenser to the middleneck and I sealed the other two with some Stoppers because I wasn't going to need them then at the other end of the condenser I attached a vacuum adapter and a flask and with all of this in place the setup was very close to being done the only other thing that I had to do was put a heating mantle under the reaction flask and to attach some water lines to the condenser and at this point it was good to go so when I felt that I was ready I just cranked up the heating and I waited for it to get nice and hot for a while though it really didn't seem like very much was happening and over the next 15 minutes all it did was just shrink a bit when I saw this I started getting slightly worried that I'd potentially ruined things by not properly mixing the Catalyst but then almost right at that moment I was greeted with a nice little puff of smoke this was Then followed by a lot more smoke which started filling the entire setup and I felt that this was a good sign this because it showed me that something was for sure happening and the polystyrene was clearly starting to break down as far as I know this was mostly happening just because of the heat alone which was causing the long polymer chains of the plastic to slowly split apart at the same time though all of the magnesium oxide Catalyst was supposed to be helping with this process and making it go a lot faster the only unfortunate part was that right now it didn't seem like any of this smoke was actually styrene and I think it was mostly smaller fragments of the polystyrene to fully break it apart and to get single molecules of styrene I was going to have to keep heating it and to let it cook a bit more so I just kept going and as it slowly got closer to 400 C or 752 Fahrenheit it actually started making some liquid which was really nice to see this because in theory this was supposed to be mostly styrene and now I basically just had to wait so I just let it sit there and over the next few hours I slowly collected some murky yellow liquid eventually though it completely stopped coming over and when I looked over at the other flask I saw that there was pretty much nothing left it was now just a bunch of black crust which was probably mostly the Catalyst along with a small amount of tar this was a very good sign that pretty much all of it had been converted and at this point the reaction was definitely done so I turned off all the heating and I went back over to the other flask that was filled with my beautiful yellow liquid as I mentioned before this was supposed to be mostly styrene and I was pretty happy with how much I got but considering that pure styrene is clear and colorless this was obviously full of a bunch of other trash I was definitely going to have to clean it up a bit and to get started with this I quickly poured it all into a separatory funnel this then caused it to separate into two layers where the bottom one as far as I know was mostly just water and I'm not entirely sure where it came from it really didn't matter though because it was all just trash and to get rid of it I just quickly drained it away this left me with some yellow liquid which was still pretty much just as dirty as it was before and to continue cleaning it I poured it all into a beaker then into this I started adding a bunch of white powder called sodium sulfate and I was hoping that it would pull out any water that might have still been there I was also hoping that this would get rid of all of the cloudiness and when I came back to it about 20 minutes later it was nice and Crystal Clear which I was really happy to see the only unfortunate part was that the sodium sulfate hadn't just magically taken away the yellow color and there was obviously still a bunch of garbage 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 at the bottom this would block out any sodium sulfate that I might have accidentally transferred over and everything was getting filtered directly into a fresh round bottom flask then when it all eventually passed through I got rid of the funnel and I quickly put together pretty much 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 I then cranked up the heating and within just several minutes it had already started boiling there was also some Vapor that was quickly traveling up the column and when it eventually made it to the condenser I started collecting some colorless and Crystal Clear drops of liquid this was really good to see because it showed me that the distillation was definitely getting rid of that nasty yellow stuff except what was sad was that this wasn't actually styrene it was just some random side product and I knew this because the temperature on the thermometer was only around 40 C and this told me that the vapor that was coming over was only barely warm it wasn't even close to being hot enough to be styrene which would be well over 100c and I was just going to have to wait for the temperature to slowly rise so I just sat there watching it gradually collect more and more clear liquid and when it eventually got to around 100 C it started to look a bit milky it was also around this point that I started getting more and more nervous that the temperature just wouldn't stop increasing and that somehow there wasn't actually any styrene here and I probably worry like this during most of my distillations however eventually it thankfully ended up stopping at exactly 142c or 288 Fen which was extremely close to the boiling point of styrene this told me that now everything that was coming over was probably some nearly pure styrene so I quickly got rid of this flask that was filled with junk and I swapped it out for a fresh 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 back into polystyrene but anyway at this point I just had to do a bit more waiting and over the next 30 minutes all of the styrene slowly distilled over during this time I also carefully watched the temperature and when it started to rise again I knew that the distillation was done so I turned off the heating and I carefully removed the flask and what I had now was just a bunch of nice and clear liquid and it was kind of weird to think that this used to be a bunch of styro foam cops with that being said though based on just the smell and the boiling point alone I was 99.9% sure that this was styrene but to be 100% sure I was going to have to do a couple tests these tests were also relatively quick to do and I just had to run a small amount of it through these two little instruments that I have where the first one does something called FTI and the second does something called hnmr I then got these results which may or may not mean absolutely nothing to you but together they told me that this was for sure 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 even though all of this styrene just smelled like plastic and kind of gave me a headache it was actually pretty close to being cinnamon flavor in theory I was really only one step away and the only thing that I was missing was this small section here this meant that I was of course going to have to somehow add it and while it didn't look too complicated it was going to be the most difficult part with a simple Google search though I quickly found this on Wikipedia which claimed that it was possible using something called the vme hawk reaction finding an actual procedure unfortunately wasn't as easy but after searching for a while I was thankfully able to find one in this paper and it was even better than what I was hoping for so I decided to just go ahead and try it out and to get started I went and got a fresh flask and I added 70 MLS of a solvent called dimethyl formamide or DMF for short then after that I added a stir plate and a large dish filled with ice and I dropped in a stir bar I also turned on the stirring and added a thermometer as well as an addition funnel and a stopper with all of this in place I then had to wait for the DMF to cool down and in the meantime I went and got another chemical called phosphorus oxychloride this is honestly kind of a horrible chemical and it's both really corrosive and kind of 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 look at the thermometer and it was extremely hard to see but it showed that the DMF was now less than 10° C this meant that it was good to go and when I felt that I was ready I carefully opened the addition funnel and I unleashed the phosphorus oxychloride I then did my best to adjust it so that it would get added at a slow but steady rate and what I had to do now was just closely watch the temperature to make sure that it never went above 20c 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 the entire thing to boil over what I did think was kind of interesting though was that it didn't really look like very much was happening and it almost looked like I was just adding water to more water however in theory the nasty phosphorus oxychloride was supposed to be reacting and combining with the DMF to make a new molecule which is known as the VSM reagent this was supposed to be the main active ingredient in this reaction and in just a few minutes it's going to make a lot more sense why I'm making it with that being said when it was eventually all added I got rid of the addition funnel and what I had to do next was just let it stir for a bit to make sure that it had all reacted while I was waiting though it was the perfect time to go and get all of the styrene that I just made and to measure out the amount that I needed when I was first pling this reaction I was really tempted to just risk it all and use everything but at the same time I knew that was a horrible idea this is because there have been way too many times where reaction has just totally failed on me and considering that I'd never done this one before I didn't really have the confidence so in the end I decided to go with only 27 and2 Ms of the styrene which was about oneir of what I had and this would give me a couple more attempts if this ended up being a complete failure with that being said at this point the VSM reagent was definitely ready and the next step was to slowly add all of the styrene so I started by pouring in just a small amount and at first it really didn't look like much was happening it really seemed like it was just going to be another step where it would feel like I was just mixing water with water except eventually it actually started changing color this told me that there was definitely some sort of reaction going on and in theory the styrene should have been attacking the vilsmeier reagent and forming a bond with it this would then lead to the formation of this new intermediate which was basically a combination of both molecules and now it was starting to look a bit closer to cinam alahh what I also thought was interesting was that this intermediate technically had a second form that existed at the same time and this will be important later on but anyway what I had to do next was make sure that everything fully reacted here and to do that I was going to have to heat it up so I just quickly pulled out all of the ice and I replaced it with some water and I added another thermometer I then cranked up the heating and as it warmed up the color of it gradually shifted to Orange and then to something that kind of looked like some tasty cranberry juice it was of course still just a bunch of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals though and despite how good it looked it would have been an absolutely horrible idea to taste it but anyway it eventually got to 55c and according to the procedure this was when it was supposed to suddenly start heating up it also said that it could potentially heat up so much that it needed to be cooled but for whatever reason that didn't seem to happen it did look like it was slowly getting darker though which told me that more of it was definitely reacting so I gave it about half an hour to make sure that I didn't cause some sort of disaster and when it seemed safe I cranked the temperature even higher it then continued to slowly heat up and over the next 45 minutes it got even darker in fact by the time that it got to around 75c it was nearly block and at this point the reaction was probably really close to being done just to be absolutely sure that everything had reacted though I had to let it sit like this for another hour when I came back to it I was kind of surprised to see that it had gotten even darker and now I was ready to move on to the final step of the reaction so I just quickly took apart this entire setup and poured everything into a beaker that was surrounded by ice this is because what I had to do now was pretty much the opposite of the previous St step and I had to cool it 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 together another solution so I went and got a beaker and I added 340 M of water followed by 133.5 G of something called in hydrous sodium acetate I then started mixing it around to get it to dissolve and after only a few minutes it had pretty much all disappeared with this ready I was able to go back and check on the other stuff which during this time had partially solidified when I saw this I was a bit concerned that this might be an issue but at the same time I figured that it was probably fine it was also around zc which was exactly what I wanted and I decided to just go with it so I started by adding a very small amount of the sodium acetate solution and almost immedi mediately it thankfully started loosening up I was very happy to see this but at the same time it was also starting to heat up quite a bit and I had to make sure that it stayed cool what was supposed to be happening here though was pretty exciting and all of 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 portion of it to get kicked off and Lead leading to the formation of the final cinam aldhy also as a side note all of the sodium acetate that was in the solution I was adding wasn't just doing nothing and it was there to act as something called a buffer which would help keep the pH constant and this was very important for this reaction when I was eventually done adding it though i' let it stir for a bit longer and when it looked like the color stopped changing I pulled it out of the ice bath I then carefully placed it into a hot water bath that I had preheated to 75c because again I apparently had to heat it up however this was thankfully going to be the last time that I had to do this and it was just to be absolutely sure that it all reacted this way I'd be able to get as much of the cinem aldah heide as possible I mean assuming that 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 though it should have finally been done and the only thing left to do was to put it in the fridge and to let it cool down I then left it overnight and in the morning when I opened the door I was hit almost immediately with the really nice smell of cinnamon at the same time I was also really excited and kind of surprised by what I saw because on the surface there was now at looked like a thick layer of oil it was very possible that this was almost entirely cinam aldhy and this was a really good sign the only unfortunate part was that all of this potential cinam alahh looked like it was black and it was clearly full of a bunch of nasty junk so even though it was kind of tempting tasting it like this would have been an absolutely horrible idea and I was definitely going to have to clean it up on the bright side this was supposed to be a relative straightforward process and the first step was to pour it all into a separatory funnel on top of this I then dumped in 100 Ms of a solvent called diethyl ether which was immediately able to mix with the oily layer on top I then sealed it with a stopper and carefully took it off the stand and I started shaking it around I was doing this to try and force The diyl Ether and the water to mix which should help The Ether pull out any cinam aldhy that might have been stuck in the water when I eventually felt that I'd shaken it enough I put it back on the stand and over the next few minutes it separated into two layers again this time though the bottom water layer was a lot clearer which was good and it told me that the ether had probably pulled out some cinam alahh with this in mind I then carefully drained away all of this red water and I took the ether oil mixture that was left in the funnel and I poured it into a beaker then after that I put all of the water back into the separatory funnel and I added some ether and I repeated the exact same extraction process four more times I was doing this just to make sure that I got out absolutely everything and when I was done I was left with a beaker full of nice red liquid most of this was just all the ether that I had added and only a small amount was the oil that I actually wanted but what was important was that it was already a lot cleaner than what I had started with the only unfortunate part was that there was for sure still a bunch of trash in it that I was going to have to get rid of and to get started with this I had to pour it all back into a separatory funnel I then dumped in 100 Ms of regular water which almost immediately turned yellow and this told me that it was definitely pulling out a bunch of crap in particular though I was really hoping that it was removing any DMF which was in the original reaction mixture and that was for sure picked up by The Ether I also wanted to be absolutely certain that all of this DMF was gone before moving on and the easiest way to do this was to just wash it with a huge amount of water so I decided to repeat this same washing five more times which should have been more than enough and by the end the water was almost colorless this meant that it probably wasn't pulling out much of anything anymore and I quickly drained away all of the water I then took all of my slightly less red liquid and I transferred it all to a flask and I set it up for a distillation I then cranked up the heating and I was doing this to get rid of all of The Ether and only a few minutes later it was already boiling after that it only took about 30 seconds to start collecting some crystal clear ether in the beaker and now I just had to wait for it all to pass over this wasn't going to take very long though and only about 20 minutes later it was pretty much done what was left in the flask was now a super dark and goopy liquid and again it didn't really seem like it but this was theoretically cleaner than the oil I started with to get pure cinam alahh though there was just a bit more cleaning to do and I felt that the easiest way to do this was to just do another distillation so I just carefully transferred all of it to a much smaller flask and I 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 attach a vacuum line all of this extra stuff kind of made it look a lot more complicated but it was still more or less the same thing and it'll all make sense in a bit in any case when I felt that I was ready I turned on my vacuum pump and I carefully pulled all of the air out of the setup I also cranked up the heating and only a few minutes later I saw that it was already starting to boil the vapor was also starting to climb out of the flask and it wasn't long before I started collecting a nice and colorless liquid this was very exciting and I was very happy to see that it wasn't a nasty red color except just like last time I knew for sure that it was unfortunately just trash this is because when I looked at the thermometer I saw that it was only around 30C which was still way too low for it to be cinem Malahide the temperature was continuously Rising though which was good and I just had to patiently wait until it got to the boiling point of cinem alahh the only tricky part was that because this was all being done under a vacuum the boiling point of cinam Malahide was going to be much lower than its normal temperature of 248 C or 478 Fahrenheit instead it was probably going to be around 100 C or 212 Fahrenheit which was a value that I got using this online calculator but it was very hard or even impossible to perfectly predict this made me a bit worried that I would have trouble differentiating it from the junk that I had to separate it from but there really wasn't too much that I could do about this it was also absolutely not an option to do it without a vacuum and in the presence of air because this would cause a lot of the cinam Malahide to just get oxidized and destroyed so all I could do was just continue patiently waiting and watching the temperature and to hope that it magically stopped at 100 C however long story short that didn't happen and it ended up going right past it and stopping at 125c which was a lot higher than I expected as I just mentioned though the boiling point under a vacuum is always hard to predict and it was very possible that cinem aldhy was now coming over what also made me think this was that when I looked at it much closer it seemed to be faintly yellow just like pure cinam aldhy and I decided to just commit to it so I carefully Twisted the end of the setup which allowed me to swap the flat without releasing the vacuum and now I was fully separating this fraction I then continued collecting this yellow oil and carefully watching the temperature and over the next hour the flask slowly filled up at some point though the temperature suddenly dropped which told me that some higher boiling point stuff was going to start coming over and when I looked back at the original flask it looked like all that was left was some red junk at this point the distillation was done and I was almost certain that what I had now was some nice and relatively clean cinam alahh the only part that kind of concerned me was that it was definitely way more yellow than pure cinam alahh should be and the idea of tasting it like this was honestly making me uncomfortable so just to be safe and to put my mind at ease I was unfortunately going to have to clean it up a bit more and to do this I quickly put together this fresh and clean distillation setup I then cranked up the heating and it really wasn't long before some drops started coming over and this time I decided to collect a decent amount before swapping the flasks this would just really make sure that I got rid of any impurities and when I felt that I had sacrificed enough I switched it to the second one what I was collecting now should have been extremely pure cinam alahh and what was very nice to see was that it was definitely a lot less yellow I then just kept going and waiting for the temperature to suddenly drop and when I saw this happen I quickly switched it to the third flask I also turned off the heating as well as the vacuum pump and at this point I was finally done after weeks of work I now had the beautiful pale yellow oil that I was hoping for and I carefully started transferring it all to a vial as I did this I was also hit almost immediately with a super nice and sweet smell of cinnamon and by now I was pretty much 100% sure that this was pure cinam alahh however if I was going to taste it I was of course going to have to be absolutely sure so I went ahead and ran some tests on it like the styrene I did both an FTI and an hnmr and this was what they gave me again it might not mean anything but together they showed me that this was for sure cinam Malahide and that it was quite pure and I was very happy to see this this is because now after all of this work I could finally taste it and I wouldn't have to worry too much about it instantly killing me I should say though that there was still a chance that it contained something horrible that didn't show up on the NMR and in general it's not a good idea to taste any homemade chemicals but either way way I just pulled out a small amount of it and I sucked it into my mouth well okay definitely cinnamon but kind of tastes good doesn't it doesn't burn nearly as much as I thought pure cinnamon oil would and it's also kind of sweet every other flavor I've had just tastes horrible or weirdly enough burns my mouth even when it's supposed to just taste like grape or something but this is supposed to burn and it doesn't even burn that much it's kind of interesting okay so I for sure had some nice and tasty cinnamon oil but more importantly it was now finally time to try and make some candy with it specifically though I really wanted to make little cinnamon Hearts which have always been one of my favorite candies and I wanted them to look as close as possible to the classic ones that I grew up with the only tricky part was that I quickly found out that to make them like this it was a lot harder 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 customized candy making machine more accurately though it was mostly just the rollers that were customized and there were little hearts carved out into each of them they were also the exact size and shape that I wanted them to be and right now it might not be super obvious how this is used to make candy but it'll make a lot more sense in a few minutes with that being said now that I had the machine I was finally able to get started and the first step was to get a pot with a thermometer attached to it then into this I poured in half a cup of water followed by 2 cups of regular table sugar and 1/4 cup of corn syrup this was apparently all that was needed to make hard candy and from what I could tell the only difference between most recipes was the proportion of each ingredient the specific recipe that I was using though was from this video made by the channel flavor lab and I just felt that it looked good but either way with everything added I quickly mixed it around and when I eventually felt that it looked nice and even I turned on the cooktop and cranked up the heating I then just had to leave it and wait for it to warm up and to carefully watch the thermometer this is because as it got hotter and as the water in it slowly boiled away the temperature was supposed to slowly increase according to the flavor Lab video this would gradually bring the candy through several stages where the first one was referred to as softball what I needed though was hard crack which would occur between 90 and 310 F and this would give me candy that was hard like a lollipop so I just let it go and over the next 20 minutes the temperature slowly Rose and eventually it got to the 290 Mark I decided to let it go a bit further though until about 300 Fahrenheit and the moment that I saw this happen I turned off the heating and got rid of the thermometer at this point the base candy should have been ready and it was time to give it some flavor so I went and got all of my precious cinnamon oil and I carefully pulled out 3.7 Ms which ended up being most of it I then quickly shot it in to the still super hot sugar and I thought that it was kind of interesting to see it just sit on top and basically do nothing however this was only because the boiling point of cinam Malahide was way higher than 300 fhe and with most other flavors shooting it in like this would probably be a bad idea regardless of that I was now super close to being done and there was just one last but extremely important ingredient to add this was of course some potentially carcinogenic red dye which was absolutely essential to make proper cinnamon candy and I felt that several drops would be enough I then quickly mixed it around and in less than a minute it had a nice red color but I wanted it to be even stronger so I dumped in a whole bunch more after this I was actually able to get the exact red color that I was looking for and at this point things were looking really good I was starting to feel a little nervous though because what I had to do next was the actual hard part and I was kind of worried that I would completely screw it up however I chose to instead just not think about it and I pulled the sugar off the cooktop and I quickly poured it onto some silicone I then started moving it around while it was was cooling down and eventually it was supposed to turn into something that was kind of like bread dough long story short though that didn't happen and I did completely screw it up and instead of getting something that was soft and malleable I got something that was filled with a bunch of hard chunks the moment that I saw this I honestly started to panic and I really started worrying that I just lost the majority of my cinnamon oil totally failed it's simple as that I failed you know pack up our bags that's it that's our candy this is this is it 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 just going to have to restart at the same time though I felt that there had to be a way to remelt it without burning it or completely destroying it and I figured that it was at least worth a try I also felt that I had to at least make an attempt to not just lose the majority of my cinnamon oil and in my mind the best first step was to very carefully break apart all the sugar no this gave me some nice little pieces which I was able to put put all back into the pot and then I put this back onto the cooktop on top of this I also shot in a random amount of water as well as a completely arbitrary amount of corn syrup and I cranked up the heating I then just waited for it to melt and what I was hoping for here was that all of the extra water would help prevent the sugar from burning and that the extra corn syrup would make it take longer to harden the only thing that kind of concerned me was that heating it again would potentially cause it to caramelize and by the time that it got to 300 F it was looking a lot frothier than before it also looked like it was turning brown which really scared me but it seemed like it was mostly just because the food coloring was breaking down so I just blasted in some extra red color and mixed it around and very quickly all of the froth disappeared and it actually looked really good this time though I wasn't going to let it cool down at all and I almost immediately pulled it off the cooktop and started pouring it out compared to before it was definitely way more liquidy which I felt was good and I did my best to constantly move it around while I was doing this I was also still really worried that I would end up just getting a bunch of solid chunks again but that thankfully didn't happen instead over the next several minutes it just slowly got thicker and eventually I had pretty much exactly what I wanted it was just a blob of gooey sugar which felt almost shockingly similar to hot bread dough and I was happy to see that my recovery attempt had actually worked there was unfortunately almost no time to celebrate this though because I still had to turn all of this sugar goo into some nice little cinnamon Hearts before it cooled down and it was time to use my machine from what I saw online it also seemed super straightforward Ward and I basically just had to throw it into the rollers and then squish it so that was exactly what I did and for the most part it seemed to be going pretty well and I was super happy to see that it was forming some beautiful little hearts the only weird part was that it was a lot more difficult to turn than I thought and I think this was because the sugar that I was putting in had cooled down a bit too much this needs to be like anchored to the ground I also might have been just going too slow which was causing it to solidify and I was only able to squish half of the sugar before it became way too [Music] hard okay so I ended up having to basically just give up trying and it was honestly kind of impressive how badly I had screwed up this entire process despite that though it wasn't like it was just a a complete failure because I was still able to get a bunch of little hearts and they were actually super nice to get them apart I also just had to apply a bit of force and they all easily crumbled which I thought was really satisfying after that I then spent a couple minutes breaking apart the parts that were still stuck together and at this point I was extremely close to being done in theory there was just one last step which was to coat the candies with more sugar and to give them that classic look that I originally wanted I had actually even bought an entire machine to help me do this but after seeing how nice they were without a coding I decided to keep them this way there was just something that I really liked about them like this and now after months of working on this project I was finally done finally done and uh I think there's I think there's only one thing left to do after all of this work I can see was it all worth it for this we'll see okay H it tastes I mean I don't know why I'm surprised it tastes exactly like cinnamon candy it's really good it has pretty much the exact flavor that I wanted it's not too much cinnamon not too little it's a very nice mild cinnamon candy the only thing that I think is that kind of threw me off normally they just crunch but this one it it's a bit more chewy it's kind of like a uh I just made cinnamon heart Jolly Ranchers basically H oh that was that one was crunchy for some reason and more cinnamon okay I need to I I cleared need to refine my candy skills but overall kind of I'm honestly kind of amazed at how well they turned out okay so in the end and despite an almost impressive lack of candy making skill I think I can still call this project a success I mean I was actually able to turn a bunch of old styrofoam cups into some nice little cinnamon candies and even though they weren't exactly perfect I'm still really happy with them what will also be fun is that in the future I do 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 I'm going to be focusing on some more dangerous projects like turning air into a bomb this is actually a video that I was probably never going to make because I know that YouTube would definitely not like it but I'm happy to say that it's now possible thanks to nebula who's also the sponsor of this video for anyone who hasn't already heard of nebula it's a creator-owned and operated video streaming service with content from hundreds of creators like the thought Emporium taroo and real engineering it also has a huge catalog of nebula Originals which includes shows films and documentaries as well as exclusive bonus content from many creators and it's all delivered completely adree personally I've been really enjoying the travel Series game by wover Productions called jet lag the game which features many creators you may know taking part in travel related challenges all across the world this show was also funded and produced by nebula which I think is really cool especially because I'm now a part of nebula myself as a Creator on nebula I'll be offering Early Access to new videos along along with all of my older uploads including NY blue as well as the videos that I've had to remove from YouTube I will also eventually be making some more videos that I know YouTube won't like like the one I mentioned earlier but now thanks to nebula I'm still excited to make them even though I know they'll probably get demonetized by YouTube with all that being said though I really think that nebula is a great platform especially because of how supportive they are of all of their creators and I definitely recommend checking them out you can also do this right now by clicking on my link in the description go. nebula.com out to only 250 a month and a portion of this will directly support this Channel and that's it as you usual a big Thanks goes out to all my supporters on patreon everyone who supports me can see all my new videos at least 24 hours before I post them to YouTube You'll also get access to all the older videos that I had to take down and if you support me with $5 or more you'll get your name at the end like you see [Music] here [Music] e

Channel: NileRed

Views: 6,348,654

Keywords: nilered, nile, red, science, chemistry, styrofoam, plastic, styrene, sugar, cinnamon, sweet, candy, treat, turning, making

Id: zMaTrgUKC1w

Length: 52min 57sec (3177 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 16 2024