 covered a few times candy making and see if it would be possible to make something using our ancient tools and equipment that we've made from scratch so far. So a challenge Lauren to see if she could make some starbursts starting all the way from scratch and see how well they turn out and maybe give it a little bit of a cursed flavor. So let's see how they turn out. Today's modern starburst candy started in the 1960s as Opal Fruit, a small square taffy known for the fruit flavors. Taffy itself dates back even further to the 1800s where it became known for being sold along the boardwalks of the northeast. Taffy contains a few ingredients but at its core it's primarily sugar. Alright so we have our sugar beets and the sugar beet is called the sugar beet because it has sugar in it. About 25% of the root is actually sucrose and that is what we are going to harvest today. Oh yeah nice. So even though it did freeze the root has been protected by the soil so the yield is still good so we can still use these guys and dig them up. Doug Trio. Whoa. Alright gonna get rid of the dirt and then do the processing. So we only need the root which is the actual beet so I will be taking the dirt off, taking the greens off and then peeling it. I'm gonna rinse them, make a nice soup. Beets are so scary looking they look like rat tails. In order to get more sugar out of the beets we are going to hash brown it. That makes the water come in contact with the surface area of the beet and then give this more sugar. You ever have a. Ukra fries? No, um. Homicidal thoughts. Our thin strips. Right now that the fire has calmed down I'm gonna put the little bowl of our sugar beets on here. Kind of reduce some of the water down. It's gonna bring it to a low boil and that's gonna help the sucrose extract from the sugar beets and that's what we're gonna need to use. Great so as you can see we are losing some of our yield which is not great. We're gonna have to figure out how to make fire clay so we can actually have things that we use over fire that doesn't crack. If anybody has any advice let us know. Alright so it looks like nothing happened but there's some little bubbles which it's meaning that there's definitely some sucrose happening in there. My sucrose senses are tingling. Oh yeah getting a little milky. Love that. Dobby. Hi Dobby. So last time we did some sugar beet work it oxidized. Turn black. We don't want our candy to be black so we're going to try to use some citrus juice to stop the oxidization. It is sweet and starchy and now it has a nice hint of lime which was unexpected but I think it'll be pretty good. Now that we've extracted the sugars we're going to dehydrate it which will just leave the sugar left and we'll be ready to use it for our taffy. So I'm gonna make some taffy today and I got an expert here from Max Fish & Chip. So my name is Tom Flanagan. I'm the owner of Max Fish & Chips. We do made to order fresh fish and chips but we also make saltwater taffy which is why we're here today. That's what we're going to do today. We've got our location which is here in Minneapolis but we have another one across the river over in St. Paul. Man I've heard something about the twins games. Yes we do so we do walleye out at Target Field for all the twins games. That's awesome you have a stand there. We do. Cool okay well I'll look for the mascot. Oh yeah he's always running around. It seems like we don't have a lot is this really all you need. Really basic ingredients so we've got four things today. So we're going to start with just some plain white sugar okay and is there a certain amount it looks like well I can't tell you the exact recipe okay you're gonna have to figure that out for yourself that's very fair and then we got a little light corn syrup plain old water I know what that is plain old butter that's it we're just going to mix all these together all right so we'll set this on our heat source and then wait perfect so right now I'm just checking the temperature it's a little bit humid today so we're going to go a little bit hotter than normal we're going to stop this right when it hits 249 we go much over that the taffy is going to be too brittle and too much under that it's going to be too liquidy and we won't be able to pull it so what we're doing right now is boiling out all the water okay and so that's where the humidity comes into factor oh sure when we're pulling it that air is going to get mixed back into it and the air is too humid and adds too much moisture it's not going to be the right consistency there's a lot of room for air which is making me nervous so this is all done we're going to pull this off nice so what's next all right so we're going to cool this down real quick we're going to give it an ice bath and then we're going to mix in the color and the flavor so what I'm doing is just checking to see how hard it's getting and then we're going to kind of mix all the hot bits with the cool bits the official taffy poke so what's going on now is the taffy is cooled on the bottom but it's still hot on the top and so we want to mix it back together it's really really hot yeah 300 pieces so we opened up this shop about eight years ago that's about how long we've been making taffy all right so we're gonna add a little salt is that why it's called salt water taffy it is dang see how I put that together all right we got strawberry today we're doing strawberry today all right so now we're going to work that flavoring in because that's going to absorb all that flavoring and then it's going to be able to disperse it throughout the rest of the candy okay you guys ready to pull it yeah they're going and it definitely changes far yeah it's going to start bulking up a little bit here too wow very cool has it ever fallen up once you get it like this it's pretty stable if you leave it too long and it gets brittle then it's going to fly all over the place and yeah I've had that happen a few times how am I going to do this by hand like it's going to be a lot of work it is good thing I'm so buff so I'll pull out a little piece here do you see how it kind of switer webs a little bit when you do that yeah that's how you know that it's done oh nice so right now what we're doing is we're going to spread out this taffy a little bit so that we can cut it into strips yield today is this the right consistency seems like a good yield you make it look so easy well I've done it before yes yeah it's cool you can see the little air bubbles in there so you're going to pick up your wrapper and put it right there fold it over on the top give it a twist like a burrito you're gonna pinch both ends like that and that's it fold over roll like a burrito oh see pinch and twist I was not pinching but first quick word from today's sponsor keeps two out of three guys will experience male pattern baldness by the time they're 35 if that's something you're concerned about they might be interested in today's sponsor keeps offers the only two FDA approved hair loss treatments out there and has more five star reviews in any of its competitors getting and using it is really simple you just visit a doctor online and get it delivered straight to your home best way to prevent baldness is to combat it while you still have hair if you're ready to take action and prevent hair loss go to keeps.com slash htme or click the link in the description and receive 50 off your first order that's keeps.com slash htme all right now that Tom showed me how to make taffy I'm gonna try to do it myself here we have the ingredients we did the beet sugar that we've reduced we have water butter and we don't have corn syrup because we haven't unlocked that but we did make maple syrup and that's kind of the same thing I think all right since it's Halloween and you know a trick or treat we're gonna go a little creative with our uh ingredients so for the trick portion peppers you know good flavor a little orange juice and toothpaste a classic and then for the treat we're gonna do the classic strawberry like Tom taught us did I tell Tom that we're making these flavors no all right salt all right mixing this beautiful flavor I'll tell you the ingredients orange juice toothpaste okay all right I'm just gonna grind these up in the mortar pestle but I don't want any of the dang tops get those out of here all right we got some peppers from Andy's garden multiple varieties all right I'm cutting this carefully I will wash my hands afterwards all right gonna see if we can get some strawberry flake okay goopy so hopefully I can glob this in this bowl oh yeah all right now the next step is just to mix everything together in our pan that we'll be cooking it in first we have the beet sugar since it is in a liquid form I'm gonna use slightly less water but still a bit corn syrup in the form of maple syrup and then our butter I think I'll use about so for our taffy we're gonna go a little different route and we're gonna make it in a nice little squares as a nod to the 1960s smash it starburst which is actually taffy I didn't know that so in order to make the candy wrappers I am assuming it's gonna be pretty sticky so I'm gonna have some canvas cloth and put a film of beeswax on it so I have melted beeswax but I'm also using beeswax to spread it because you know why not why not there's no rules get it into our heat source very carefully okay all right it started to homogenize definitely boiling so the consistency is important to make taffy because if it's too hot or too cold it'll either turn out into a hard candy or a caramel so it's important that you hit it somewhere in the middle all right so I don't think we're gonna have a very big yield it seems that you know more of it's boiling off than I thought but we're gonna have enough for at least three pieces let's do the part where I boiled the pepper in order to get the pepper essence we're just gonna put this in here it's gonna kind of boil let me get you a bite oh gotta be pretty quick gotta get in gonna bring it over here so I'm just gonna use a little bit of this flavor and get out of here goodbye thank you for your service okay we're gonna have so much lost we're gonna have so much lost in the bowls okay saltly oh my god shut up it's a good idea okay because you can stir it more controlled make it strawberry oh yeah ink looks like peanut butter but it's not it's a little cursed but it's Halloween okay gonna work see it's hardening already yeah it's turning into caramel because I got got too cold okay working it in it's gonna work all right this is the general motion this is so cursed there you go look at that okay we're adding the air to it that's kind of a mess my apologies we're taking what we got and wrapping it up hands are a little sticky lovely all right so I'm just forming them into the starburst shape this is the spicy one you can tell by the seeds dip this in the orange juice toothpaste orange juice and toothpaste great third and final strawberry parents if your kids come home something like this probably don't eat it there you go there's our taffy all right so we're gonna go back to Tom have him try one which one he tries it's up to him I'm really advertising the presentation I think it would just fly off the shelves it's uh oh okay so what I think happened is I think it's caramel a flavors to be honest it kind of tastes like bacon um okay so you're kind of getting like a crystallized taste yeah so what we did we don't have corn syrup yep so we substituted maple syrup which wasn't the best idea because I realized that it crystallizes and that's what we're tasting here whole kind of but it was super crystallized yeah but well the bacon makes sense now the maple syrup what's interesting is when we were first kind of learning how to do this yeah we made a lot of taffy turn out just like this okay so I'm kind of on the right hand yeah you're getting for a first try it's not terrible but yeah it's definitely um yeah if you enjoyed this video be sure to subscribe and check out other content we have covering a wide variety of topics also if you've enjoyed these series consider supporting us on patreon we are largely a fan funded channel and depend on the support of our viewers in order to keep our series going thanks for watching