Preserving Nerds / Pop Rocks so they activate in the mouth and not in the food

Question

I want to be able to use Nerds and/or Pop rocks in cooking. However, unless the food is ultra dry, the food itself activates / dissolves it; I want it activated in the mouth.

a) Is there a way to do this that does not involve coating them with something that must be bitten through, i.e. so that it is saliva activated but not activated by the other liquids (water, milk, oil, egg …) in the food?

E.g. to use them in ice cream, it'd be preferable not to require biting.

b) What can I coat them with that will not activated them but will preserve them for bitten activation? They're extremely reactive. (Water, oil…)

One plausible suggestion I've gotten so far and not yet tried is vegetable wax. Anything else?

c) How can I make a pop rock type sensation myself?

[ETA: instructables has a recipe for making poprocks per se, but it has the same issue. I'm wondering if there's something that'd work for mouthfeel but be less volatile during the cooking process for embedding in other things.]

Answer 1

Coat them in bee's wax or cocoa butter. You can actually buy them from MSK with the coating on.

You likely won't be able to make them yourself without a huge amount of equipment. As far as I'm aware, they require carbon-dioxide to be pumped in, as the sugar mixture cools. This is what makes them crackle, as the gas is released when the small pockets of air dissolve.

Answer 2

I have planned something that I think will solve the problem.

My sons 5th birthday is coming up and he wants a "dragon electricity cake", so I had the idea to add a pop rocks layer in the middle for him. Because its going into a cake, it's less precarious than your icecream example, but what I'm going to try is cutting one layer of the cake in half so I'm not icing it, and I will coat the poprocks with icing sugar, or maybe an icing sugar corn starch combination. I'll also sprinkle both layers of cake that will be touching them with icing sugar. This should be enough to keep then dry, but I'll experiment with the cake and I'll try to respond with my results! If you've done any experiments since then I would love a few more ideas!