Candy (redirected from Candy pieces)

candy: see confectionery.

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candy

Sweet sugar- or chocolate-based confection. The Egyptians made candy from honey (combined with figs, dates, nuts, and spices), sugar being unknown. With the spread of sugarcane cultivation in the 15th century, the industry began to grow. In the late 18th century the first candy-manufacturing machinery was produced. The main ingredients are cane and beet sugars combined with other carbohydrate foods such as corn syrup, cornstarch, honey, molasses, and maple sugar. To the sweet base are added chocolate, fruits, nuts, peanuts, eggs, milk, flavours, and colours. Common varieties include hard candies (crystallized sugar), caramels and toffees, nougats, jellies, fondants, marshmallows, marzipans, truffles, cotton candies, licorices, and chewing gums.

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Candy 

confectionery made from sugar-molasses syrup, to which various ingredients are added. Candies may be divided into coated confections, completely or partially covered with a layer of chocolate, fondant, paste, caramel, or other coating; uncoated confections; and filled chocolates. The candy surface may also be entirely or partially sprinkled with cocoa, powdered sugar, chopped nuts, wafer crumbs, or bits of chocolate. According to the type of mass from which the filling is made, candy may be classified as fondant, fruit, milk, nut (praline), liqueur, whipped, crème, gril’iazh (made from roasted nuts), marzipan, and so forth. Individual pieces may be made from either a single mass or from several masses, for example, forming combined or multilayered candy or candy with wafers.

The basic operations in candy-making consist in preparing the candy mass by various methods, shaping the separate pieces, decorating (or not) the pieces, and wrapping or packing in boxes. Fondant is made by boiling sugar-molasses syrup, beating the syrup while it cools, and mixing it with various flavorings. Fruit, milk, and liqueur masses are obtained by boiling their components, and nut pastes are made by pulverizing a mixture of powdered sugar, ground nuts, and other ingredients in roller mills, adding fat, and kneading well. Whipped masses are prepared from sugar-agar syrup and egg whites or from various candy masses to which butter or coconut oil is added. Gril’iazh masses are made by mixing chopped nuts with melted sugar, and marzipan is obtained by mixing sugar-molasses syrup with finely ground almonds. Flavorings are added after the masses have been prepared.

Shaped pieces of candy are formed on the production line by pouring the masses into impressions made in cornstarch or by extruding the masses in the form of bands or sheets, which are then cut into pieces (mainly nut masses). Individual pieces are also shaped by spreading the mass in one, two, or three layers on conveyors (or by spreading it on wafer sheets) and cutting them into separate pieces; this method is used for nut, fondant, crème, whipped, and marzipan masses. Thick masses, such as gril’iazh, nut, or combination masses, are rolled out into sheets, which are then cut. Using crème or fondant masses, dome-shaped candies are released onto a conveyor. All candy masses are allowed to cool and settle before being cut. To obtain coated candies, the pieces are coated in glazers or finished by some other method.

Filled chocolates are made on continuous mechanized production lines: metal molds are filled with warm liquid chocolate and inverted 180° so that the excess chocolate covers the inside of the mold, forming the shell of the candy. The molds are then returned to their original position and sent to the refrigeration unit for cooling. Next, the filling is poured into the shell and covered with liquid chocolate to form the bottom of the candy. The cooled candy is easily removed from the molds. The finished product is highly nutritious: 1 kg of candy yields about 16–25 megajoules, or 3,800–6,000 kilocalories.

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See.

T. P. ERMAKOVA