ACS Webinar on Candy Science!!

More info:
http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/events/upcoming-acs-webinars/hard-candy.html

Sweet Science: Having Fun with Candy Chemistry

Thursday, October 16, 2014 @ 2-3pm ET

From soft crack to hard ball to cotton candy, you can make a lot of different styles of candy with sucrose. Have you ever wondered about the science and chemical reactions that occur when making your favorite sugary treats? Join Dr. Rich Hartel and celebrate National Chemistry Week by exploring the sweet side of chemistry.

Product ingredients labels - sugars

We have all heard the sensational headlines about this or that additive to food that is suddenly thought to be unhealthy or the latest magic bullet!  I thought I would include an occasional set of posts on some of the ingredients that are in the processed foods we buy.  I'll try to explain simply why they are added and if necessary link to some studies about their health effects (although remember everything is hazardous to your health if taken in too large a quantity - even water*)

Since I recently posted on making brittle, I will briefly discuss sugars.

Many food products have either sugar, glucose or fructose as added ingredients.  Sucrose is often made from sugar cane or sugar beets and is the most commonly found ingredient in soft drinks and foods.
Fructose is the sugar produced by fruits and lactose is the sugar found in milk.

Sucrose and lactose have similar structures as do glucose and fructose.

Sucrose and lactose (as well as many starches) are broken down into glucose in our digestive tract. We need a steady level of glucose to remain healthy - the body produces insulin to control the amount of glucose - extra glucose is turned into fat which can be changed back to glucose when needed.  Diabetics have problems producing insulin in their livers and end up with too much glucose in their bloodstream which makes them hyperglycemic.  They need to either very strictly control their intake of sugars and starches and/or take insulin to make up for what their body is not producing.

A healthy body balances our sugar intake with insulin production - and if we eat too much sugar (my bad..) we create fat!

We eat via food and drink tremendous amounts of sugar - sugar is added to almost everything since it tastes so good!

One hundred and fifty-six pounds. That's how much added sugar Americans consume each year on a per capita basis, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Imagine it: 31 five-pound bags for each of us.

That's not to say that we get most of the sugar in our diets directly from the sugar bowl. Only about 29 pounds of it comes as traditional sugar, or sucrose, according to The Sugar Association, a trade group of sugar manufacturers. The rest comes from foods.

Of course, those foods include things like candy, soda, and junk food. But plenty of sugar is hiding in places where you might not expect it.

Some types of crackers, yogurt, ketchup, and peanut butter, for instance, are loaded with sugar -- often in the form of high-fructose corn syrup, or HFCS. Use of this sweetener has increased 3.5% per year in the last decade, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). That's twice the rate at which the use of refined sugar has grown.   

From " The Hidden Ingredient That Can Sabotage Your Diet: Do you know how much sugar you're eating?" John Casey 

A 12 ounce (355 mls) bottle of soda has typically 35-39 grams of sugar!  Would you sit down and eat 7 teaspoons of sugar?  But you would drink a can of Coke (actually I don't - I find it way too sweet!) but even one of my favourites is root beer and it is just as sweet.  Fruit juices are not much better even when they are pure juice (with no added sugar) - the fruit just contains fructose instead of sucrose.
Here is a video that shows just how much sugar this really is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F10EyGwd57M

So read the labels!




* Disclaimer: the link is a hoax - dihydrogen monoxide = water H2O

Refs
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2747/does-giving-sweets-to-kids-produce-a-sugar-rush

From sugar to brittle and back?

I tried to make almond brittle using maple syrup instead of corn syrup - I ended up making maple tasting sugar crystals... what did I do wrong in hindsight?

           From this to this!

Normally in making brittle type candies it seems all you need to do is to melt sugar and create a liquid that then hardens like a glass.  Here is an example from Allrecipes.com.

Mom's best Peanut Brittle

Ingredients:
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup water
1 cup peanuts
2 tablespoons butter, softened
1 teaspoon baking soda

Directions:

1. Grease a large cookie sheet. Set aside. [or you can use parchment paper instead]
2. In a heavy 2 quart saucepan, over medium hear, bring to a boil sugar, corn syrup, salt and water. Stir until sugar is dissolved. Stir in peanuts. Set candy thermometer in place and continue stirring. Stir frequently until the temperature reaches 300 degrees F (150 degrees C), or until a small amount of mixture dropped into very cold water separates into hard and brittle threads.
3. Remove from heat;  immediately stir in butter and baking soda; pour at once onto cookie sheet. with 2 forks, lift and pull peanut mixture into  rectangle about 14x12 inches; cool. Snap candy into pieces.

All rights reserved copyright 2010 Allrecipes.com

This recipe works beautifully so why did my simple substitution of the maple syrup end up crystallizing instead of staying glassy?



Turns out that corn syrup and maple syrup are actually quite different not only in taste.  Corn syrup is mainly glucose and maple syrup is mainly sucrose (as is plain white sugar)  The addition of the corn syrup to the brittle recipe is to interrupt the reformation of sugar crystals at the high temperatures when the mixture is supersaturated. We want the supersaturation to create the glassy liquid but, in a pure sucrose mixture at high heat, any crystal that is in the pot can create a rapid crystallization of the whole mixture which is what happened in my case!


As I researched a bit more I discovered that most brittle recipes that use maple syrup also add some butter at the beginning as this will also help prevent the crystallization from occurring by keeping the sugar molecules separated by minute amounts of oil.



So I redid my experiment: I took the recrystallized sugars, blended them until they were small crystals again and remelted them - this time with 2 tablespoons of butter added immediately.  Panic set in at the 250 degree mark as it looked like it was going to crystallize again (Sidenote: Use a silicon or very sooth spatula to stir; not a wooden spoon as there are many more crystallization sites on a rough surface!) but I kept stirring and finally it stayed melted at about 300 degrees (hard crack).  I added some roasted almonds and poured the mixture onto a baking tray covered in parchment paper. The colour was much darker since it had been double-heated but it tastes yummy!

Here is a proper maple sugar brittle recipe

Maple Walnut Brittle

1/4 cup real maple syrup
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup butter
1/4 cup water
2 cups toasted walnut pieces

In heavy bottomed saucepan, over medium heat, stir together syrup, sugar, butter and water until melted and creamy. Continue to gently boil and do not stir until candy thermometer reaches 300°F (150°) “hard crack”. Immediately stir in walnuts and carefully pour hot mixture onto an ungreased cookie sheet and spread out to a thin layer with a wooden spoon. Cool completely.

Break into large pieces and store in an airtight container. 

Makes 1 pound.

Recipe provided courtesy of the American Heart Association.

Added references
For more maple sugar info:
Maple fact sheet 202
Ochef - Using Sugar, Brown Sugar, Honey, & Maple Syrup Interchangeably
And a quick scientific overview of how the sugars differ in making candy:
http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/candy/sugar.html