Hobbies And Interests
Things You'll Need
Instructions
Chocolate Station
Place a double boiler, half-full of water on the bottom, on medium heat. Break up some chocolate and put it into the double-boiler. Place a few sheets of parchment paper on a flat surface near the chocolate, along with some candy decorating markers. Edible markers are available at craft and baking stores.
Stir the chocolate until it's melted and let one of the kids take the chocolate's temperature. At about 110 degrees Fahrenheit, spoon up some of the chocolate and smear it onto a sheet of parchment paper.
Let the chocolate in the boiler cool to about 91 degrees. Smear some of that chocolate on a separate piece of parchment. The hotter chocolate will turn white as it cools because the fats didn't have time to melt back into the chocolate.
Give the kids food paint markers and let them draw pictures on parchment paper. Spoon a little melted chocolate into a bowl and let them outline their drawings in chocolate. Have them keep track of the chocolate's temperature; if it becomes too cool, add it back to the boiler and temper it again.
Let the chocolate harden on the parchment. Your kids have edible chocolate portraits.
Sugar Candy Station
Freeze some novelty ice cube trays and cookie stamps ahead of time. These will produce interesting candy shapes after the candy experiment is over. Cookie stamps leave an impression in a cookie without cutting it apart; you want these, not cutters.
Place a double boiler, half-full of water on the bottom, on medium heat. Pour the pancake syrup of your choice into the boiler and let it melt until it's very runny and thin.
Place the frozen ice cube trays on a cookie sheet and carefully drizzle some of the syrup into the cube wells. The syrup should freeze and harden immediately in the wells, creating instant candy.
Pour some of the melted syrup onto room-temperature cookie sheets. Stamp it with the frozen cookie stamps and observe what happens. Again, the syrup should harden into instant candy.