Pulling Sugar – Opera Cream Dreams

This post started out as an ode to my mixer and my gratuity for the labor saved by it’s electronic exertion. I spent several hours contemplating this when I first attempted homemade Opera Creams. But as I stood pulling sugar in my kitchen by hand, I thought about all of the people who may have had this job many years ago.

I would have loved a job like that. There is something cathartic about pulling sugar by hand, a manual sensory process that yields something so good and comforting. There is time…time to think about anything one wishes. That is something in short supply these days.

I wondered if the process could be achieved as successfully with my electric mixer. It might not shorten the time, but I could do other things in the kitchen while it was being pulled. I could multitask!

I set about following the same process as outlined in my April 5th post, Homemade Opera Creams. After the cooling stage, I transferred the candy to my mixer and set it going on low speed. It smelled delicious, the paddle attachment lifting and spinning the mixture and exposing it to air. The motion of the mixing sent the scent afloat in my kitchen.

I switched the speed to medium and the paddle moved faster still, the scent of candy now mesmerizing me, rendering me unable to do anything other than stand dreamily by the mixer.

Thoughts of what to do with this batch of Opera Cream filled my head. Chocolate cupcakes with Opera Cream filling? Opera Cream S’mores? Opera Cream Whoopie Pies? Can I resist just digging in with a spoon? Will it still be good if I freeze it? One thought led to another, until an entire hour had gone by.

It was almost done and as I drew my head away from the mixer I was able to escape the fragrant hypnotism of the motion. My thoughts turned to storage. Wrap it tightly in plastic wrap, put some in the freezer. Clean up the kitchen and then look at cupcake and whoopie pie recipes.

In the end, using the electric mixer did not save time. Although this ingenious invention did make the job easier, there was no motivation for multitasking. Either method, hand or machine, leads to an hour of time spent in candy perfume dreams. The kind of motion we wish for.