Cotton candy — also called candy floss, fairy floss or barbe à papa — is spun sugar: granulated sugar melted and flung through fine holes so it re-solidifies into a mass of gossamer-thin threads. Wound onto a paper cone or packed into a bag, it looks like a coloured cloud and collapses to almost nothing on the tongue, dissolving in a rush of pure sweetness. It is, chemically, little more than sugar and air — the archetypal fairground and carnival sweet, sold in vivid pinks and blues that owe their colour and faint fruity or bubblegum flavour to added colouring rather than the sugar itself.