Cotton Candy

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Top 10 State Fair Food Favorites

Posted by CarnivalMidways.Com on August 10, 2009
Posted in: News. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , .

By SCOTT MAYEROWITZ – ABC NEWS Business Unit

State fair season is beginning and, for many, that means one thing: food. Lots and lots of food, often deep fried, on a stick or deep fried and on a stick.

Can you say fried pineapple on a stick? Or pork chop on a stick? Or, even more perplexing, salad on a stick? Then there’s deep-fried Milky Way bar on a stick, meatball on a stick, cheesecake on a stick, fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a stick and don’t forget about the fried pickle on a stick.

It seems like everything at the fair just tastes better on a stick.

Click Here for Photos of State Fair Food Favorites

Fair-goers from Iowa to Texas to Minnesota marvel each year at the various concoctions, returning to old favorites and trying new treats.

This year at the 158th Wisconsin State Fair, for instance, all the hype is about chocolate-covered bacon.

It has been a runaway hit, selling 7,000 slices — unexpectedly — in the first day of the fair Thursday. Teams now are working through the night to ensure that there is enough bacon for the fair with nearly 100,000 slices expected to be sold by the end of the 10-day event.

“You get a little bit of the sweet and you get a little bit of the saltiness. So you mix those two loves together and that’s where chocolate bacon came from,” said Jessica Deeg of The Machine Shed restaurant in Pewaukee, Wis., the maker of the treat. “It’s a craze around here and it’s awesome.”

Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes, it is served on a stick.

So what are the top foods at this year’s fairs? ABC News scoured the country and came up with our own list of top favorites. Feel free to add your favorites to the comment section below.

1. Caramel Apples

2. Belgian Waffle on a stick

3. Deep-Fried Oreo Cookies

4. Corn Dogs

5. Frozen Coffee On a Stick

6. Cotton Candy

7. Funnel Cake

8. Fried Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich

9. Deep-Fried Norwegian Banana Split

10. Open-Faced Grilled Spam Sandwich

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The Long and Illustrious History of Cotton Candy

Posted by CarnivalMidways.Com on March 18, 2009
Posted in: News. Tagged: .

by: ccruiserboyy – Content Caboodle

Cotton candy – what would childhood be without it? It’s sticky, sweet airiness brings memories of summer days spent under the circus tent, or meandering through the country fair’s exhibits. Let’s not forget nights sent on the carnival’s Ferris wheel, cotton candy in one hand while the other grips the car’s bar for dear life.

Cotton candy goes back a long way, though, from its appearance at fairs and carnivals. It wasn’t the light, airy, wispy stuff we know today, but spun sugar was all the rage in the days of knights and their fair damsels. Since sugar was rare and expensive, it was a treat reserved only for the very rich, so few folks ever got to experience it. Medieval cooks first spun sugar on forks to create webs and strands to decorate cakes and other sweets. Confectioners would make castles and dragons and fairy tale creatures from it to the delight of the rich and famous of the day. Lords and ladies would marvel over the spun sugar creations, while the lowly servants could only look on with longing.

Later, cookbooks shared the techniques involved in spinning sugar. Most involved swirling a fork into the sticky cooked sugary syrup and drawing it out at just the right time to create the right thickness of sugar thread. These threads were then spun or wound around an upturned bowl. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, spun sugar was again the rage in Europe, with confectioners creating sugar Easter eggs and covering other candies such as chocolate in intricate webs of spun sugar. This was pretty much how cotton candy (called spun sugar) existed until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

No one can really say for sure who “invented” cotton candy as we know it today. Four separate individuals – Thomas Patton, Josef Delarose Lascaux, John C. Wharton, and William Morrison – all had a hand in it, it would seem.

In 1899, John Wharton and William Morrison were granted a patent for a machine that melted and spun the sugar. The pair of Nashville, TN candy makers then got really creative. They introduced their “fairy floss” and its electronic maker at the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition, otherwise known as the St. Louis World’s Fair, in 1904, and the tradition of cotton candy and fairs was born. They sold nearly 69,000 boxes of the stuff at 25 cents each. It was one of the Fair’s most expensive treats, earning the two men over $17,000, nearly half a million dollars in today’s world.

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