The science of making candy

RICH HARTEL: I'm Rich Hartel. I'm a professor, faculty member here at the University of Wisconsin. I teach candy science.

[CHEERING]

So we're going to make some hard candy today. This is a mixture of granulated sugar. You can see the white stuff here. We have corn syrup in here as well. And then we have water to help dissolve the sugar. We're just going to dissolve all the sugar, make sure that there are no sugar crystals in here. Because eventually, we're going to make hard candy, which is a sugar glass. So we don't want crystals.

So we've reached the boiling point now. So essentially, we're going to follow the boiling point elevation curve up. So in making hard candy, we're going to boil up to what's called the hard crack stage, where temperature's around the order of 300 degrees Fahrenheit and water contents are down around 2% or 3%.

So we're now at the 233 degrees Fahrenheit range. And this is where we have the thread state. And what that means is the viscosity is high enough that when you pour this into cold water, it forms threads as it falls through there. But the viscosity is still low enough that those threads dissolve fairly quick.

So we're now at about 240 degrees. And this is, according to the candy thermometer, where we find the firm ball stage. And so we've boiled enough water that when you drop it into cold water, it forms a coherent mass that you can take out and form it into a ball that can still be manipulated. So it's plastic enough to be malleable but it's still a firm ball that can hold its shape.

OK. And we're at about 298 now. And so I'm going to stop it and take it off the heat. So we're now going to take this over to the cold table and pour it out and start the next stage of the process.

So at this point, we've poured it onto the cold table. And it's starting to cool. You can see that, as it cools, it becomes more plastic, more firm. We have some color granules. And we'll add those in here. Some flavor-- so we're going to add a little bit of lemon flavoring to this. And then we're going to add a little bit of acid as well.

So right now we're in the stage where it's becoming a plastic mass. And we're just trying to get it into a shape that it will go through the rollers. It still has enough heat in it. And the viscosity is low enough that it starts to flow. So if I were to form it now, it would form, but then it would quickly deform, just like it's doing here.

So this is just about at the point where we can form it. It's viscous enough that it's not flowing very quickly, yet it's still plastic enough that we're going to be able to get it through the rollers and turn it into a nice candy.

As you can see, we're sending this plastic mass through these drop rollers. They fill into the shapes and make the drop-shape candy.

So now our lemon drops have solidified enough. They've reached room temperature where now they're in the form of a sugar glass. So this is just like window glass, except it's made of sugar molecules, not of silica. But now, because it's in a sugar glass, I can drop this onto the tray, and it's going to shatter. It'll shatter along the webbing here, leaving behind some intact lemon drops.

So at this point, we have lemon drops. But they have all these sharp edges on them, still. So the next step in the process would be to put them into some kind of tumbling drum to smooth out the edges.

[CHEERING]