The unlikely story of the dentist who invented cotton candy

When I was younger, I loved eating cotton candy at the fair or on rare trips to amusement parks. Cotton candy always seemed like the perfect snack for walking around a hot summer day — regardless of how sticky it was or how it seemed to turn my mouth blue.

What was cotton candy originally called?

Nowadays, I'm too wary of cavities to indulge as much as I used to—which is the great irony of the treat, considering how many dentists played a part in its early days. Oh yes, it's a sweet story Cotton candy is essentially very thin spun sugar even thinner than a human hair. With cotton candy, sugar is heated up until it melts into a liquid, then spun around at high speeds to force the liquid sugar out a series of small holes.

As the sugar liquid spins through these holes, it cools rapidly. The result is a lot of long, skinny "strings" of sugar that clump together on a cone or a stick. Spun sugar on its own is usually white, but by adding flavors and syrups to the melted sugar, cotton candy makers can create the iconic blue and pink colors we all know and love. The most important part of a cotton candy maker is the spinning head.

A cotton candy machine generally looks like a large, shallow bowl with a small chamber in the middle.