Ah, fairy floss. Who doesn’t have happy memories of devouring those sweet puffs of pink and blue sugar, spun – as if by magic! – around a too-short stick, or stuffed inside crinkly plastic bags that get stickier by the fingerful.
Fairy floss is old-school party food at its best. Pashmak – Persian fairy floss – is a slightly different beast, and we’ve seen that popping up on fancier desserts here and there for years. But the sweet, fluffy handfuls we remember from childhood have been mostly a matter of nostalgia.
Now, one young Sydneysider is bringing it back and his take is a sophisticated blend of hand-spun sugar infused with playful flavours like Mojito (pale green), Cookies and Crème (white with brown sprinkles) and Maple Bacon (apricot pink).
Fluffë is the brainchild of Nathan Hunter, 20, a self-confessed sugar junkie. “I’ve always loved sugar!” he says. “I could eat it forever, I’m a massive lolly addict.”
2 in 1. A combination of Maple Bacon and Birthday Cake flavours. Source: Nathan Hunter
Nathan’s artisanal fairy floss brand delivers bags of seasonal- and custom-flavoured floss worldwide from its online store, and offers party packages in New South Wales, where the sweet stuff is spun fresh on-site. He estimates around 70 per cent of the parties he’s booked for are for grown-ups.
It was a trip to his grandmother’s home in the country that first sparked the idea for Fluffë. It was December 2013 and Nathan had just finished high school. He was there working on a portfolio of “fake logos for fake businesses” to get into graphic design at university, and memories of freshly spun floss came flooding back. “We go up there every year to celebrate my grandmother’s birthday, which is around Easter, and the town always has this mini Easter show,” Nathan says. “It’s really been the only place I can remember getting fairy floss fresh.”
The Fluffë touch Source: Nathan Hunter
Two days later, he bought a fairy floss-making machine, but turning his enthusiasm into a marketable product wasn’t so easy. Nathan spent countless hours researching fairy floss online, only to come up empty handed. “Surprisingly, it is incredibly untouched and just accepted for what it is: pink sugar,” he says. “This made me super frustrated, but I knew that it also meant what I was doing hadn’t been done before.”
Convinced flavour would always be his point of difference, Nathan spent a year perfecting Fluffë's menu list.
Today, Unicorn Poop – a blush pink floss with coloured sprinkles and a heady musk flavour – is his most popular. “I don’t know whether it’s because of the colours, the fact that it’s musk-flavoured, which doesn’t really exist anymore in our current array of lollies, or if people just love the name,” Nathan says. Sweet tidings indeed.
Find Nathan at www.fluffe.com or on Instagram.
A Fluffë cup Source: Nathan Hunter
The Unicorn Poop Source: Nathan Hunter
Photographs by Nathan Hunter
