What if someone asked you, “What’s the most essential ingredient to most candies?” More than likely you’d answer, “Sugar.” And you’d be right...but that’s not the end of the story.
When you think of sugar, you’re probably imagining white, granulated sugar that sweetens things like tea, coffee and lemonade. You know – it’s the stuff you can buy in five-pound bags at the market. White granulated sugar like this can come from sugar cane and sugar beets. But there are many types of sugar other than the white granulated kind.
The differences usually come from the way the sugar is processed. For example, if you’ve ever watched someone make cake frosting – or you’ve made it yourself, you’ve seen confectioner’s or powdered sugar. Unlike granulated sugar, which is course, powdered sugar has a super fine texture. This is because it has been pulverized. To maintain the powdery texture and keep it from clumping, what you buy at the store is usually a mix of 97 percent powdered sugar and 3 percent cornstarch.
As we already established, sugar is the main ingredient in most candy. In fact, most candy comes from sugar that has been cooked. In the same way that different processing techniques produce a variety of types of sugar, heating sugar produces different results. At different temperatures, sugar takes on different properties. To understand this, let’s take a look at Cotton candy.
Cotton candy is one of those amazing foods that makes no sense until you know the secret. There is no way to produce cotton candy without special equipment, but if you have the equipment, it is incredibly easy!
Cotton candy is nothing but pure sugar. To make the sugar "cottony," you need four things. First, you need heat to melt the sugar and turn it into a liquid. Next, you need a set of very small holes that the liquid sugar can flow through to form threads of sugar and a bowl to catch the threads. Finally, you need a spinning head that slings the liquid sugar outward so it is forced through the holes.
In a cotton candy machine, the head contains the heater to melt the sugar and make it liquid. Then, by spinning the head, the cotton candy machine forces the liquid sugar out through the tiny holes in the head. The instant the thin threads of sugar hit the air, they cool and re-solidify. So in the bowl of the machine, a web of sugar threads develops. The cotton candy vendor collects the web on a paper cone and then it’s ready to eat.
Popping Candy
Hard candy (like a lollypop) is made from sugar, corn syrup, water and flavoring. You heat the ingredients together and boil the mixture to drive off all of the water. Then you let the temperature rise. What you’re left with is a pure sugar syrup at about 300 degrees F. When it cools, you have hard candy.
To make popping candy, like Pop Rocks or Zip Rocks, the hot sugar mixture is allowed to mix with carbon dioxide gas at about 600 pounds per square inch (psi). The carbon dioxide gas forms tiny, 600-psi bubbles in the candy. Once it cools, you release the pressure and the candy shatters, but the pieces still contain the high-pressure bubbles. If you look at a piece of Zip Rocks or Pop Rocks candy with a magnifying glass, you should be able to see the bubbles.
When you put the candy in your mouth, it melts (just like hard candy) and releases the bubbles with a loud POP! What you are hearing and feeling is the 600-psi carbon dioxide gas being released from each bubble.
