Candy Experiments by Loralee Leavitt

This isn’t a baking book per se, but it does have something related to the pastry kitchen: candy. As a mom, I know how much fun my kids enjoy experimenting and working on home science projects. Their science kits complete with microscopes, tweezers, petri dishes, and empty and prepared slides to look at things up close makes any rainy day (or day too hot to play outside) a fun one. But as someone who works with pastry, I’d love to combine the two. I found that in the book Candy Experiments by Loralee Leavitt, due out in January, 2013.

This isn’t a recipe book for candy, and while most ingredients are ‘eatable’, they are not meant or designed to be consumed. There are cautions and warnings for that throughout the book. Think of each ‘recipe’ as what it is: a science experiment.

Experiments go from really simple such as testing which candy has acid inside of it using a baking soda or cabbage indicator, or which candies have oil inside of them. The more advanced ones include how to make a Life Saver spark in the dark. Leavitt gives a pretty good description for chocolate bloom, another experiment. While most experiments can be conducted with limited adult supervision, it is necessary to ensure the younger ones don’t eat the candy experiments afterwards and to keep the experiments under control.

Candy Experiments makes a good after school or weekend science book, but also as a fun way to incorporate candy into science fair projects. If you’ve ever struggled with helping a youngster come up with an idea or narrow down the field of millions of possibilities, you’ll appreciate projects that can easily be done on the kitchen counter using their favorite candy as the main ingredients.

Book Information:

• Candy Experiments by Loralee Leavitt
• Andrews McMeel Publishing; 2013

Disclosure: This eARC was provided by the publisher and any opinions are my own.

This review can be found in the Fall 2012 Issue of Pastry Sampler Journal.