An introduction to the everyday candy!

Everyone loves candy, which is a confectionary made with a concentrated solution of sugar in water. For variety in candy, flavorings and colorants are added as required. Some people even freeze this candy to make ice pop which is great on a summer day.

Sugar is dissolved in water or milk to form syrup. The syrup is boiled till it reaches the right concentration, or till it caramelizes. Depending on the ingredients used and how long the mixture is boiled, you get a variety of candy.

Some are soft and chewy to eat while others are hard and brittle. The most famous forms of candy are toffees, fudges, jelly beans, gumdrops, caramel, cotton candy, lollipops, peppermint sticks, chocolate coated raisins and sucking candy.

It is the sugar concentration that determines the final texture of the candy. On heating the sugar syrup, it boils and starts evaporating. This leads to an increase in sugar concentration and its boiling point. Different sugar concentrations have different temperatures where high temperatures and greater concentrations lead to hard and brittle candies while lower temperatures lead to softer candies.

The different stages of sugar concentration were coined from the process used to test the syrup, before the start of thermometers. The test was carried out by dropping a small spoonful of syrup in cold water. It was the characteristics of the resulting lump that determined the concentration of the syrup.

If there are long strings of hardened sugar, it indicates ‘thread’ stage, the smooth lump indicates ‘ball’ stage with corresponding hardness described and the ‘crack’ stage indicates a very brittle candy that tends to crack from the rapid cooling of the water.

Though a candy thermometer is available today, many kitchens still use these tests for determining their candy. This is because though convenient, candy thermometers have its drawback of not adjusting automatically for local conditions like altitude, which is possible in the cold water test.