Hot answers tagged candy
15
I think Doug and yossarian both touched on the main points, but to summarize, there are four reasons why you might not want to use a meat thermometer for candy:
Range A meat thermometer might go from 140 F to 220 F or something like that, which is plenty for meat. Candy often requires a range from about 75 degrees (chocolate) up to 400+ degrees (hard ...
14
What you're observing is called syneresis. Most gelling agents such as gelatin and agar will tend to lose water over time, especially as the temperature goes up (i.e. from refrigerator to room temperature).
What is in fact happening is that the squares are drying out and pushing water out to the surface, which is why the powdered sugar gets soggy or even ...
12
The keyword you are looking for is "fondant".
Fondant is a soft candy characterized by a smooth texture that comes from small sugar crystals.
It can be as simple as sugar and water boiled to the right temperature and allowed to cool undisturbed. Kind of like fudge without the fat and chocolate.
The filling of Cadbury Creme eggs is called "poured fondant" ...
10
Grainy means your sugar formed crystals during the heating process. Lemon and other acids retard the formation of crystals, which is why one came out better than the other.
I'd suggest adding some cream of tartar to the other one (which should do the same as the lemon, but without changing the flavor).
In general, to lower crystallization, you should make ...
8
Be careful of substituting agar or any other "firm" gelling agent; you're likely to end up something closer to Turkish Delight and agar in particular has the property of syneresis (meaning that your gummy candies will dry up fast).
I can think of a few things that would alter the consistency of a gelatin candy/dessert:
First, it is very important to let ...
8
You can give your candies hard shells by dipping them into a melted mixture of one part water, two parts sugar, and 1/2 part corn syrup. Melt those ingredients together over medium to medium-high heat until the sugar has totally dissolved and the mixture is at the hard crack stage (295-310° F./146-154° C.). Remove your pot of glaze from the heat and ...
7
You can make your own in minutes: (requires wooden spoon and bowl)
400g icing (confectioners) sugar
75ml water
150ml glucose
5 drops yellow food colouring (leave out for white!)
Mix the water and glucose until smooth, then add the icing sugar until you have the desired consistency, then add the food colouring, if you're making the yellow centre!
You can ...
6
Gummy candy is essentially just water, sugar, gelatin, and a few other additives like food colouring.
Gelatin's gel strength1 is partially dependent on its concentration. The more concentrated, the harder it gets. Gummy candies left sitting around will lose water due to evaporation, which makes the gelatin more concentrated and thus harder, and if you ...
6
First, I don't know where you people all get these gelatin-filled Turkish delight recipes. Turkish delight is made with starch, not gelatin (at least the recipes used in Turkey are all with refined starch or rice flour). What you are making here is jell-o (if you use small amounts of gelatin) or gummi bears (if you use lots of gelatin).
Second, about the ...
5
If you are making your own marshmallows, you can add home made or purchased natural food color. With home made colors there is a trade-off: too much coloring liquid and you get the added flavor, too little, and the colors will be whitish. You make your own by concentrating the juices of blueberries, raspberries, spinach, or carrots, or by using turmeric.
...
5
Generally you have to work with it when it is still exceptionally hot. Hence the use of taffy-pullers and such devices. Silicon/heat-resistant gloves possibly, if you wish to work by hand, traditionally always "oiled hands".
I've seen examples where the mixture is arrested, allowed to cool for a couple of minutes and quickly reheated slightly to return ...
5
When I make buckeyes using this recipe from Smitten Kitchen, I tend to reduce the amount of butter a little, and the sugar a lot. Then I increase the graham crackers, and add some low-sugar puffed rice (Rice Krispies-like cereal) for texture. You might be able to work with some "filler" ingredients like that to make up for the lost fat from the butter. ...
5
This is definitely one of those times where I wouldn't recommend substituting agar for gelatin; it's simply far too stiff for marshmallows.
If you can get hold of some methyl cellulose, it works great for marshmallows. Unlike other gelling agents, methyl cellulose hydrates in cold water and sets when heated, so you can roast it with direct heat and it will ...
5
It's difficult to find reliable information amidst all the marketing hype with xylitol, but here's what I've been able to figure out:
Xylitol does have fewer calories, per unit of weight, than table sugar. However, xylitol is also less sweet than sugar. Factually, it has about 2/3 the calories of sugar. Anecdotally, it is about half as sweet, so if you ...
5
It is simply to add tartness to add some balance against the sugar. The water from the vinegar will evaporate and leave behind acetic acid. There is an old fashioned type of hard candy known as vinegar candy. Your lollipop is essentially just that candy on a stick.
5
For the frame, I would suggest baking a cake, brownies, gingerbread or even cookie dough in a baking sheet (so it's one big, quite thin piece). But put the temperature of the oven lower than if you would use a regular baking mold. You could also use a piece of styrofoam/polystyrene*, covered with tin foil. Then you can use tooth picks to hold everything in ...
5
I like Kristina's suggestion that you research some of the basics of candy making. I'll answer those questions only briefly.
Generic Candy Questions
You don't need to heat particularly slowly
This is not like an egg custard where the speed of heating will affect the curdling temperature. You're just trying to get water out. Just don't heat it so fast ...
5
This, I confess, is just a guess—I'd suggest adding some pectin.
Pectin is a thickener that occurs naturally in fruit, but its likely absent entirely in the fruit juice you've been using. However, it's probably present in the fruit purée used in the commercial products.
Pectin is, for example, the primary (if not only) jelling agent in jam, jelly, and ...
4
The higher the temperature, the harder the caramel. That is basically the whole story. So I think what is happening to you is that the caramel in the middle is still going up in temperature due to residual heat, while the stuff at the sides cools down quickly because it can vent heat through the pan to the outside world. Have you checked the calibration on ...
4
Remember your stages of sugar boiling and how they come out, if it's too sticky or soft it is probably down to too low a final temperature (wrong texture) or more likely too much golden syrup.
Be sparing with the golden syrup / glucose syrup, the sucrose will set in to hard sugars, but the glucose/inverted sugar syrup acts as a crystallisation inhibitor, ...
4
Well, from the look of things, reducing the butter and sugar will just result in a smaller recipe--that's almost all there is!
You might be able to substitute some kind of starch for some of the sugar. I wouldn't use flour, since you won't be cooking these and it would leave them tasting strongly of raw flour. I don't know what starch would work, but that's ...
4
As you mentioned it is all about how the crystals form.
Some of the factors off the top of my head:
How saturated is the solution -
The more sugar packed into the syrup the more easily it will crystallize.
How quickly it cools -
The slower the bigger the crystals
Interference -
Do you have a starch or other sugar molecules gumming up the works?
...
4
The only place I've ever seen flavored oil for cooking is in a friend's kitchen. I got mine from the wonderful internet...
http://www.amazon.com/Wilton-1913-1029-Candy-Flavoring-Set/dp/B001205FI4/ref=sr_1_2?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1293115217&sr=1-2
Also if you were making it a batch at a time you might want to use flavored gelatin to increase ...
4
Besides the obvious - your toffee will have more salt in it? Salted butter also contains more water than unsalted butter, and varies more on both salt and moisture content on a brand-by-brand basis than unsalted butter. A higher percent of water means less fat, so after the water cooks out, your ratio of fat to sugar will be off somewhat.
4
I assume you mean sherbet, which is made by mixing 1 cup of powdered sugar (also called icing or confectioner's sugar) with 1 tsp of baking soda (also called bicarbonate of soda) and 1 tsp of powdered citric acid. Altering the proportion of soda (alkali) to citric acid makes it more or less fizzy.
4
On the Splenda website it says that Splenda doesn't caramelize like sugar. Admittedly, it is talking about getting the golden brown colour in your baked goods, but I suspect since it doesn't happen in that instance, it wouldn't work in a hard candy.
4
In Scotland we make a kind of fudge that is deliberatly hard and crystallised known as Tablet. This was a popular treat when I was growing up. Essencially the recipe for tablet, soft fudge, toffee and caramel are quite similar. The difference is made by how you cook and treat the mix as it cools.
Essentially you need to know about sugar boiling points. ...
4
Butter largely acts to prevent the crystallization of sugar in toffee. This leaves the toffee smooth and breakable.
Fats in candy serve a similar purpose. Fatty ingredients such as
butter help interfere with crystallization—again, by getting in the
way of the sucrose molecules that are trying to lock together into
crystals. Toffee owes its smooth ...
4
If you search for glacé cherries you're going to get nowhere; these are much more commonly referred to as candied cherries and there are plenty of recipes to be found.
More specifically, the most common pairing seems to be almonds. Seems you can make just about any confection from almonds and candied cherries: cookies, nut brittle, bourbon/almond balls, ...
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