Candy Dish Blog

Disclaimer; I am in fact a scientist, and we are not traditionally known for our smooth social skills.

One of the most important factors to bear in mind whilst searching for your V-day date is keeping it cool.  Nobody wants to go out with a nervous babbling stress ball.  Also, clean up your breath. Hot, stinky, nasty breath is just one word: unacceptable. Uh uh.  I may not know from personal experience, but statistically 9 out of 10 propositions fail when stank breath is involved‡.

Good news though. There is one solution to both of these dating no-no’s.  Chew a piece of sugar-free peppermint gum or pop a little mint into your mouth.  The minty flavor will freshen your breath and cool you down, or at least trick your nerve cells into thinking they are cooler.

One of the dominant flavor compounds in mint, methyl salicylate, interacts with specialized nerve cells that sense temperature.  This minty flavor molecule triggers nerve cells to send the “I’m cool” signal to your brain, although there is no actual temperature change.  Convenient, as prior to making your move, your brain could use all the false cool hopes it can get.

Follow my advice and I guarantee that sparks will be flying.  If not with your new sweetheart, your mint candy can substitute for this phenomenon.  The mint flavor compound menthanol has the ability to fluoresce, which accentuates normal static sparks so that they become visible. Chomp down on a mint Lifesaver in the dark with your valentine and watch the sparks fly.

‡Editor’s note: This statistic was made up by Laura, and although believable, is not based in scientific fact. But take care of that stank breath anyway. Your date will thank you.

A pair of hearts… by Nanimo.

Like Carl, I am often envied by my friends for my sweet gig as a candy scientist here at the National Confectioners Association. There are different types of candy scientists in the industry. For example, research and development scientists work on developing new flavors and formulas, while quality control scientists make sure the candy is safe to eat and consistently delicious, and engineers work on fixing and maintaining the equipment used to make candy.

My job is actually quite unique. I spend a lot of my time helping confectioners understand all of the government rules and laws that they need to follow, including really tiny boring details like the exact font size their labels must be printed in. I also get to help promote industry-wide collaboration on scientific projects such as designing equipment to make candy safer and developing a method to measure antioxidants in chocolate. Another fun part of my job is putting on industry short courses about the science and safety of candy production. When I’m not busy with candy school, laws, or coalitions, I just help out when anyone needs a scientific opinion on candy, or anything in general, such as how to make cheese out of eggnog (not recommended, btw).

The luckiest part of my job for me is that it’s my first job out of school and I wasn’t even quite finished with my master’s degree when I started working here. My first day of work was at the candy expo, a welcome change from the 18 years I had spent in school prior to that day.

I first got involved in the satisfying field of candy science as a freshman in Food Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I started working as a lab assistant with my advisor, who happened to study chocolate and ice cream. Food Science was a fun major and particularly employable. I had two internships – one at ADM Cocoa, where I worked at a cocoa plant in the Netherlands, and another one at General Mills, where I helped formulate Nature Valley Granola Bars.

I went on to graduate school where I learned more about health, science and policy and the opportunity to apply to this job came as random luck through a conversation I had when I happened to run into my old college advisor. Basically, I think Carl’s paradigm applied to getting my job as well, but I think that for me, the biggest component of being good at something had to do with my passion for learning about food.

Editor’s note: Many thanks to Laura, who agreed to merge the Careers in Candy theme with her weekly Candy Science Tuesday post.

Science Lab by *Maya*

Chewing gum is one of the oldest candies known to mankind. In fact, archeologists have discovered evidence of gum from prehistoric times. While gum chewing as a practice has endured the test of time, individual flavors of gum have extremely variable timelines. Some gum flavor lasts longer than others, or at least seems to.

An important aspect of gum flavor perception is actually the sweetness factor. Our brain cannot always distinguish between the signal for sweetness and the signal for a flavor. So, long lingering sweetness can prolong the perception of flavor. Gum can be made with either sugars or artificial sweeteners and typically, artificially sweetened gum maintains sweetness longer than sugary gum thus seeming to prolong flavor retention.

The type of flavoring used also determines the strength and length of gum flavor. Flavor chemicals each have a unique volatilization temperature that causes the flavor to dissipate. Usually fruity flavors volatilize at much lower temperatures than mint flavors, which is why these flavors loss potency most quickly. Other factors can also influence flavor duration. Flavors can be encapsulated or crystallized leading to increased chew-life.

Don’t believe me? You probably shouldn’t, as good scientists need to be skeptical. Answer your gum flavor questions yourself via simple experimentation. Select five of your favorite gums and at least three of your favorite friends (for statistical significance). Randomize the gum order and administer the gum in a double-blind fashion by having one person code the gum and another person distribute the coded samples. Chew until the flavor disappearance is observed and record the flavor length of each coded sample. Your results will leave you something to chew on.

There is nothing cozier in the winter months than the aroma of baking treats while your oven kicks out enough heat to remind you of the warmth of summer. My personal favorite smell is my mother’s chocolate chip cookies. Cocoa and chocolate are essential ingredients in any baker’s kitchen. Chocolate baked good are loved for their rich delicious flavor, but these ingredients may provide benefits beyond pure enjoyment.

Cocoa and chocolate consumption have been associated with decreased risk of mortality from cardiovascular disease, reduced blood pressure, improved immune function and better cognition and memory. The class of antioxidant chemicals that is most likely responsible for these favorable health effects are flavanols. Flavanols have extremely potent antioxidant activity and are present in the non-fat solid portion of the cocoa bean. Initial concentrations vary based on the species of bean. Normal processing into cocoa powder and chocolate typically causes degradation of a portion of these disease-fighting little molecules. Nonetheless, the final products usually still contain a healthy amount of antioxidant activity.

Recently, a study by several Hershey scientists investigated the effects of baking on cocoa’s antioxidant activity. These chocolate researchers baked a bunch of different cookies and cakes and made frosting and hot cocoa. They then measured the final amount of health-promoting activity in each baked good product and ranked them from best retention of antioxidant activity to least. Chocolate frosting won the contest, closely followed by hot cocoa. Cakes and cookies, however, displayed interesting results. Some recipes lost essentially all of their favanol activity while others retained almost all of it.

So what about these various recipes influenced the differing final antioxidant activities? The variability was attributed to the pH, which was most severely impacted by the type of leavening agent (i.e. baking powder vs. baking soda) used. Flavanols can’t survive well in high pH environments. Recipes using baking soda result in a much higher pH and greater loss of favanols, while baking powder, being more acidic, helps retain flavanol concentration. So as you select tasty-looking recipes to bake during the holidays, keep in mind those best suited to retain antioxidant activity.

Chocolate Chip Cookies by elana’s pantry.

Candy corn technology has come a long way since the 1800’s (when it was invented). Nobody knows for sure who developed the first candy corn prototype, but by the late 1800’s the Goelitz Candy Company was distributing these delicious little treats to Illinois farmers. Back then, candy corn was made by hand pouring sugar slurry into tiny triangular molds.

Today, though candy corn production is now completely mechanized, the ingredients are still pretty much the same. Candy corn is made with fondant, a special confectionery ingredient consisting of about 20% sugar and 80% corn syrup. Fondant is solid at room temperature but becomes a nice smooth fluid as it is heated because sugars are more soluble at higher temperatures. This liquidy syrup is deposited in molds as it was around the turn of the century, but the process is slightly more efficient.

Rather than using solid molds to shape candy corn into its distinctive form, the syrupy slurry is poured into indentations in a tray of corn starch. The machinery that carries out this process is called a mogul. Moguls are absolutely awesome. They pour the starch into the trays, create indentations of any shape you can imagine in the starch and deposit the candy corn batter at the rate of approximately 25,200 pounds per hour. Well, at least that is the speed of a normal-sized mogul. Supersized moguls, yes that is actually what they are called, can pump out nearly 40,000 pounds per hour. Each of candy corn’s three colors are deposited individually by little nozzles that pump the candy corn batter into corn-shaped indentations.

Once in their corn starch mold, the candy corn must dry for at least 24 hours and nearly 48 hours in climates as delightfully damp as D.C. Not only does the corn starch used in this process provide versatility of shape but it also helps pull out moisture from the candy corn batter, accelerating this drying stage. Once dry, the corn starch is blasted off the candy corn with an air hose and the candy corn is polished off, finished and ready to enjoy.

Editor’s note: According to the NCA candy corn page, George Renninger, an employee of the Wunderlee Candy Company, invented candy corn in the 1880s and Wunderlee became the first to produce the candy. The Goelitz Candy Company (now Jelly Belly Candy Company) started producing the confection in 1900.

The absolute meaning of caramel has not yet been defined by the scientific or regulatory community. Caramel, unlike chocolate, which has a very specific standard of identity, can mean very different things to different people.

The exact nature of the product varies based on the copious applications that employ its delightful characteristics; caramel ice cream topping must be able to flow while cold, while caramel candies should remain firm at room temperature. Some caramel functions best in caramel corn as a hardened shell around a popcorn center, just like I had as a kid at the circus. However, the caramel in your mocha caramel frappuccino is most functional when it mixes well with coffee.

Despite these diverse objectives and characteristics there is a unifying factor in all caramel-based snacks: the chemical caramelization process that make them all possible.

In addition to Maillard browning, the reaction between reducing sugars, such as those in corn syrup, and proteins, which produces color and flavor compounds, another reaction plays a role in the formation of caramel flavor molecules. Caramelization is the breakdown of sugar molecules at high temperatures into an immeasurable number of flavor and color chemical products. Sucrose’s sensational flavor explosion happens only upon reaching 340 degrees Fahrenheit; however this exact process of this phenomenon is, like the definition of caramel, complex and poorly understood.

More research on how sugar busts up into these delicious bits and pieces is still needed. Would you like to try your hand at it? Do your part for science. Make this recipe for homemade caramel apples, being sure to carefully watch the transformation that ensues.

Laura’s Caramel Apples

• 1 cup butter
• 2 1/4 cups brown sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 1 cup light corn syrup
• 1 15-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan. Stir in sugar and salt and then the corn syrup, mixing well. Mix in the sweetened condensed milk, stirring constantly. Keep stirring this mixture and heat to 248 degree F. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla. Let the mixture cool until thick and stir for a uniform thickness.

Alternatively, you can melt a whole mess of caramel squares until they are thick enoughto stir easily.

Whichever method you use, wash your apples and stick popsicle sticks in them, and then dip them in the yummy caramel. Place the apples on a sheet of parchment paper to harden.

Caramel Apples by QuintanaRoo.

I was at the ball game this weekend when my friends noticed that the park was selling cotton candy in closed plastic containers.  This of course, prompted the expectation from my friends that I would answer all of their cotton candy questions; a duty we food scientists don’t take lightly. This new packaging technique is certainly a change from my childhood cotton candy memories of the fluffy, freshly-spun confection on a stick I used to eat so frequently at the circus.

Yes, I did spend a great deal of time at the circus as a child. My grandfather sat on the board for the Circus World Museum in Baraboo Wisconsin, which meant my brother and I spent our childhood summers volunteering as the kids that horses would jump over in the ring and riding elephants with women wearing overly sequined costumes, but those are all definitely stories for another time.

The closed container of cotton candy is actually a very clever way of keeping this delicate confection fresh for longer, especially in the disgustingly damp D.C. climate.  If you can remember back to last week’s Candy Science Tuesday post (no judgment here, I don’t even know what I did in class last night, hmmm… maybe I didn’t actually go to class last night), candy assumes one of two forms – either it is crystalline or noncrystalline (glassy). Cotton candy is made up of thin stands of glassy sugar.
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