"Squid Game" How to make the hot candy? How difficult is it to cut out the umbrella shape?

With the recent global explosion of the hottest new drama in Netflix's history, "Squid!", some of the games in it have also attracted the attention of many viewers. In real life, the game of picking "sugar candy" is sometimes used as a part of the bride-to-be process during a wedding, and also as a company team-building project.

The specific rules of the game are that the test subject must use a needle to completely peel off the pattern on the hard candy within the specified time. If the pattern is damaged or exceeds the time limit, it is considered a failure. In short, it is full of fun.
It's so fun, but how is the sugar candy made? When cutting sugar candy, which one is easier, a five-pointed star, a square, or an umbrella? Let's find out today.

How is loquat sugar made?

Luotang originated from street snacks. It is a kind of sugar made by boiling white sugar, rock sugar and water with baking soda (sodium bicarbonate). It is essentially the process of melting and solidifying sugar.

When preparing molasses, white sugar will gradually melt into syrup under high temperature. After adding baking soda, the baking soda will quickly decompose when heated and release a large amount of carbon dioxide gas, causing the entire sugar body to expand rapidly.

After the sugar body cools down slightly, the shape is carved on it with a mold, and then it is completely cooled down, and the glutinous rice sugar is ready. Careful viewers may find that why white granulated sugar and rock sugar turn brown after being prepared into glutinous rice sugar?

This requires us to talk about the caramelization reaction of sugar at high temperature.

Sugar is a substance composed of three elements: C, H, and O. When monosaccharides are heated above the melting point, two types of reactions will occur. One is that the monosaccharides themselves undergo dehydration and condensation to form dark caramel; the other is that the monosaccharides undergo cracking to form a series of aldehyde and ketone small molecule compounds, and these small molecules will further undergo condensation reactions to form dark substances.

Therefore, sugar turns brown when heated, melted and solidified.

Of course, many foodie netizens are more concerned about whether the sugar candy can be eaten?

In essence, loquat is a solid "sugar cake", so it can be eaten safely besides for entertainment.

Which shape is easier to cut into pieces?

Let’s review the scene of carving out the candy in the movie. A steel needle is used to follow the carved outline to carve out the complete shape of the candy.

In order to pick out a complete piece of molasses, in addition to dexterity, the choice of shape is also very important.

For the same material with the same stress and thickness, the smaller the cross-sectional area, the easier it is to break.

It is much easier to pick out the sugar candies with larger cross-sectional areas and regular shapes such as squares, triangles, etc. than those with complex shapes and many folded angles such as umbrellas and five-pointed stars.

Although the circle has a larger cross-sectional area, its cracks are complex arcs, so it is more difficult than squares and triangles.

Therefore, we can roughly rank the order of picking sugar from easy to difficult , namely: square > triangle > circle > five-pointed star > umbrella.