Spun Candy – Making Sweets in Shoreditch

We managed to live through a half-term in London! Given my passion for travel and now more and more so the fact that it’s part of my job, I tried to make the week as exciting as possible. With 7+ exams looming that wasn’t so easy but when you find an activity that lifts the spirits as high as the lollipop master class at Spun Candy did, you make the week memorable in on fell swoop making sweets!

I started off looking at chocolate making. My two terrors, 3 and 7 are both as addicted to sugar as the next child. Yes, I hate it and I try to limit them but there’s no getting around the fact that I’m simply not one of those smug mothers who kids ‘hate sweets’!

So, with that in mind I though it gets to really make push the boat out, so to speak.

Chocolate making booked up overnight, bizarrely, so my research took me further. I’m so happy that it did because off we went, Grandma, Mummy and the two kids, back to my old stomping ground in the City and specifically to the uber-trendy East London, off Brick Lane.

We chose the children’s masterclass, rather than the family class. Our children being on the younger side – the recommended age is from 6 -11 – us adults were there on hand to help (we thought!).

The idea behind children’s masterclass is to be educational and of course fun. The minute you step foot on the Spun Candy premises, you can’t help but smile. Sweet lover or not, there’s something fantastic and magical about brightly-coloured sweets. It’s very Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Once through the shop into the glass walled candy-making room behind. Everyone dons a white lab coat, is sent off to wash their hands and once assembled in a line we are ready to learn!

Our group consists of around 16 extremely keen mini sugar chefs. Following instructions with the youngest standing on special foot stalls in order get the best view to see the sugar work demonstrated at the front on special tables. We were taken through the process from clear liquid sugar, to multi-coloured malleable paste that was ready to be made into our own creations at our family table. We leagues about the colour and the flavourings abs the children were encouraged to really think about what went into each part of the process and why. Once our huge roll of rainbow candy paste was ready we were split into groups of four around our own special heated table, used to stop the sugar from hardening whilst we worked away and got creative.

Each group got a real sugar chef to demonstrate, help and in our case with Fernando be an all round fantastic hands-on teacher to the absolute youngest and to the adults. So prolific was our candy making that we cane away eyeglasses a huge bag full of multicoloured confectionary, ‘great for Christmas presents’ and ‘remember, it lasts a year’, Fernando tells my children. I wonder whose house he lives in!?

Spun Candy is a magical place. I defy you, young or old not to enjoy your time there. They hire out for parties and birthdays. Had we not just had our 7 year olds football party, we would certainly have been making lollipops.

Each and everyone of our sugar chef/teachers was outstanding. The class really is educational but a whole lot of fun. This place really does rock!