Halloween Science: Vampire Rock Candy

 - by KitchenPantryScientist

Think Halloween science!

I’m going to post a spooky experiment every few days from now until Oct.31st. They’re great for school or home Halloween parties, and some even make groovy Halloween Decorations!

This bloody candy experiment takes a few weeks , but is worth the wait! If you start soon, you’ll have gorgeously gruesome rock candy, dripping with sugary fake blood, in time for Halloween.


This experiment requires adult supervision for boiling and handling the hot sugar syrup. Once it’s cooled down, kids can take over.

To make 12-15 sticks, you’ll need the following:

-2 and 1/2 cups white granulated sugar

- 1 cup water

-cake pop sticks or wooden skewers

-red food coloring

  1. Dip one end of cake-pop sticks or wooden skewers in water and then roll them in granulated white sugar. Seed CrystalsThe sugar should cover 2-3 inches of the stick. Let them dry completely. These are the seeds for the sugar crystal growth.
  1. Boil 2 cups water and 5 cups sugar until sugar is dissolved as much as possible. It should look like syrup. Once it cools, this syrup is your supersaturated sugar solution.
  2. Let syrup sit until it is no longer hot and pour into a large glass jar or deep bowl.IMG_2301
  3. When syrup is completely cool, set the sugary end of the sugar-seeded cake pops or skewers into the syrup, evenly spaced in the jar. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let them sit for about a week. Gently move the sticks around occasionally, so they don’t stick to each other and the crystals in the bottom of the glass. If the glass container gets too full of crystals, pour the syrup into a new container and move your stick into the cleaner syrup to grow more crystals.
  4. When the rock candy is done, pull them from the syrup and let them dry. Save the syrup.IMG_3469
  5. To serve, pour a few cm of your sugar syrup into the bottom of a pretty glass and add a few drops of red food coloring. You can even add a little flavoring to the syrup (like cherry extract.) Stir.
  6. Put your rock candy, handle side up, into the glass. Be sure to give your guests napkins, so they don’t drip “blood” all over the house!


How do Crystal Grow?

Like bricks in a wall, crystals are solids formed by a network of repeating patterns of molecules. Instead of the mortar that holds brick together, the atoms and molecules are connected by atomic bonds.

Crystals that share the same chemical composition can be big or small, but the molecules always come together to form the same shape. Table sugar, or sucrose, is made up of a molecule composed of two sugars, glucose and fructose.  Crystals formed by sucrose are hexagonal (six-sided) prisms, slanted at the ends.

The crystals on your rock candy sticks grow from the “seeds” of the sugar you rolled on the stick before you put them in the syrup.

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