Sugar in confectionery production

The fundamental processes concerned in candy making have much in common regardless of their final form, because in the majority the chief ingredient is sugar. Some of the earlier confectioners used honey, molasses, maple (кленовый) sugar, and cane syrup as the principal sweetening agents. These same substances are used in some factory made products even today, but the above-mentioned group of sweeteners now have a limited usage in comparison with cane sugar or beet sugar.

Next to sugar itself chocolate is a very common ingredient of many candies. Starches, butter, cacao-butter, molasses, salt, nuts, gelatin, fruit, many flavouring and colouring materials, and numerous others have also their places in confectionery production.

It is the sugars present in most candies and the manner in which they have been treated that govern in large part the characteristics of the final products.

Hard candies are essentially solid solutions of sugar containing flavouring and sometimes colouring matter. To facilitate the heating and secure uniformity of the mass, water is added at the outset and later it is removed by boiling it off in a vacuum pan.

The flavouring materials are combined with the sugar when heating is completed if the flavouring material is volatile. When fruit flavours are used, acids such as citric, malic, or tartaric may also be incorporated, but only after cooking is completed in order to avoid stickiness (слипание).

Fondants are made by heating sugar and water until a supersaturated solution is produced. This is then cooled quickly and immediately beaten to incorporate air into the mixture, thus forming a cream. The creamed fondant stiffens within a few minutes and is generally allowed to stand overnight, during which period changes occur in the crystal structure and the fondant becomes softer.

The fondant is next melted in a kettle (емкость) equipped with a stirrer. The syrup batch is cooked to a definite temperature in an adjacent kettle, the batch consisting of a solution of cane sugar, or invert sugar, or a mixture of these in water. The batch is then added to the fondant and the mixture is put in the moulds of desired shape.

Somewhat different from various kinds of candy are the marshmallow products, which are much lighter in character. In making marshmallows cane sugar, corn syrup, or invert syrup is heated with water and then subsequently mixed with a warm-water solution of gelatin, gum, or albumin. Then the mass is beaten to incorporate air, which is an essential step in the process. After heating, the marshmallow is run into the starch mould to give the desired shape and produce a dry surface.