How Hard Candy Flavors Are Made

[cheerful music]

[Greg] Flavor is such a keynote to memory,

it's one of our most primal instincts.

We can play games with flavors that people don't understand.

We want to create something

which brings back a memory because candy

and flavors themselves are not the whole story,

we're just giving notes

and your brain fills in what's in between.

You're using your imagination to complete the picture here.

Oh. And the picture

happens to be one of flavor.

[candy rustling] [cheerful music]

Here at Lofty Pursuits, we make hard candy not bubble gum,

but we're still gonna make a full meal in hard candy.

We're gonna have blueberry pie,

sweet corn, apple cider and ham.

Yeah, ham, because you need a full meal.

Today I'm working with Uri and Francesca.

We're gonna make round drops of candy.

And the nice thing about the round drops

that they dissolve evenly in your mouth.

So it's gonna give an even flavor profile.

First, the blueberry pie.

So we use two types of sugars,

in this case, corn syrup and sugar, standard table sugar.

And because they both have different crystalline structures,

when they pour and they cool,

they're not gonna make a crystal,

they're gonna make an amorphous solid.

And that is what we want, we want it to behave like glass.

I love when candy connects with history

and in this case, it's connecting with,

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,

because there was a character named Violet Beauregarde

and she loved chewing gum.

And Willy Wonka made a chewing gum

that had a three course meal in it.

I'm paying an homage here.

The last course in her meal was blueberry pie.

And the blueberry pie went a little wrong. Ours will not.

Blueberry pie has two flavors which have to hit separately.

The blueberry gets acid

to make it taste more like blueberry.

And the pie crust has to give you a memory

of gram or of wheat or of

something that's been baked with butter.

Hot pot.

We mostly work with liquid flavor,

either at the beginning with the liquids

or on the table with the solids.

So we put in the liquid flavoring

and the liquid flavoring is mostly water

and it needs to be in a suspension.

And you'll see the steam boiling out, this is important.

We want the candy to have as little water as possible,

so we're using the heat of the candy

to reduce the water content.

When the sugar is flavored, we're putting it on the table.

This table is a cooling table from the 1800s,

it's specifically designed for candy making.

It's water jacketed

and it'll drop the temperature of the candy.

'Cause right now it's a liquid,

but we want it to be more like a consistency of a clay

and when we're done, we want it to be a solid.

The food coloring we're using today is a liquid

and we're applying it to the candy and we're stirring it in.

The water is boiling off again

and it's gonna spread out throughout the candy.

There are several ways to apply food coloring,

but I like this one the best

because it provides the most even color,

doesn't make little dots of color,

it's just in there.

[cheerful music]

Many people don't realize

that they're acids in almost all fruits.

Blueberries have citric acid in it,

so we're adding a dry form of citric acid to this

because without it,

the blueberry would taste sort of blueberry,

but part of the flavor profile would be missing.

A lot of the flavors we work with are natural fruit flavors,

but even when they're not natural, they're often natural

because what they'll do is they'll take a real fruit flavor

and bond it to another material

like a canola oil or something that can take heat,

so that the flavor will survive.

But now it's been modified and it's not natural.

But we work with a lot of flavors that are pure oils.

Orange oil makes a beautiful orange flavor;

Spearmint, perfect natural flavor;

Pomegranate, great natural flavor.

But some of the softer flavors that can't take the heat,

vanilla, banana, they don't work.

When the temperature of the candy is correct,

we're gonna move it to the heating table.

Now the heating table is kind of a bad name,

'cause we're not heating it.

You can't really heat the candy back up

without it breaking down and crystallizing.

It's more a, Please don't cool too fast

so we have time to work with it, table.

We made stripes with some of the flavors.

To do this, we pulled the candy

to make it a different shade.

What we're doing is we're trapping air bubbles.

The air bubbles are reflecting light

and they're making the candy more opaque and more satiny.

So we're making these satin stripes

on a clear jewel like candy.

The pulled part of the candy has more surface area,

so it's gonna dissolve faster.

With a flavor like blueberry,

this is gonna make it more immediate.

And this is also gonna get

the crust flavor to come out faster,

because we want to balance the crust flavor

and the blueberry flavor.

So by doing this, we can actually affect the flavor

with the manufacturing technique.

I'm cutting up the giant blob of candy

into manageable pieces that can go through the press.

You don't want the press to get too hot,

so we can't put this through constantly.

And if it does get too hot, it'll stick.

These giant bronze rollers act like heat sinks,

they drop the temperature of the candy

tremendously and quickly

and this lets it hold its shape.

When the candy comes out of the press,

we slide it across the cooling table.

And we're using the cooling table

once again to cool the candy,

'cause if we don't cool it quickly,

it'll go completely flat under its own weight.

It's connected by sugar flash

and we want it to break it apart.

And if you've ever wondered why

cough drops are called cough drops

or lemon drops are called lemon drops,

it's because of the drop.

[candy clattering]

[cheerful music]

I think that's probably some type of blueberry.

[cheerful music]

I really enjoy this one.

[Greg] Time for the drink, apple cider.

We're repeating the process we did with the blueberry candy

in the apple cider candy.

The apple cider candy is a bit of candy maker's magic.

Apple cider is carbonated,

and we want to add a little carbonation to the candy.

But candy can't trap air,

so we're gonna put in baking soda and a dry acid,

in this case, malic acid, which is the acid of apples.

And when it hits your mouth,

the moisture in your mouth are gonna combine the two.

And just like that volcano experiment

in elementary school science fair,

we're gonna carbonate the candy in your mouth.

The acid and the base will partially cancel each other out,

but you'll have just a little fizz.

[clapping]

Blueberry and apple cider use different acids,

we choose acids for how it makes you react.

Citric acid is a clean sour,

but malic acid makes you salivate,

this is why lemon lime drinks

are often seen as being more refreshing,

because your mouth almost instantly becomes wet.

Citric acid doesn't do that,

but makes a very clean sour that's more fruity.

So by balancing the acids,

we can actually trick your body into responding

and having memories of being hydrated.

[Uri] The impossibly small bubble straw,

if you try to drink anything through it,

will just straight up melt.

[candy cracking] [cheerful music]

[light gasping] [light slapping]

[Greg] When we pull the candy, we use the hook.

This one's from the 1800s.

We're folding air into the candy.

Candy can go from a yellowish color

to a brilliant bright white.

[Uri] We got a little bit of white from the baking soda,

but this is really gonna give it a real

brilliant white color.

[Greg] That's done by trapping the air bubbles.

What you're seeing is the light reflected off the bubbles

and we're taking the bubbles

and we're trapping them as a solid.

And it's great because it also creates more surface area.

We actually end up with a greater volume of candy

because it fluffs the candy up.

And when it goes into your mouth,

all those little air bubbles dissolve faster,

so in this case, the carbonation will be more apparent.

Flavors are also seasonal,

and the assortment flavors we have here

are seasonal to a harvest.

The apples are being picked, the corn is being picked,

it's time for the ham to be taken care of.

And we're doing this all as a feast

and this is why we associate the flavors of the feast,

because this is when they were ready historically.

We're tying them all together

[candy clattering] in candy.

[candy clattering]

[cheerful music]

Oh, now I taste the cider.

[cheerful music]

That's good. Onto the vegetable, corn.

Corn as a candy sounds crazy in the United States

but if you go to Europe and specifically Asia,

corn is a common flavor of candy.

And of course it's actually has corn in it,

'cause we're using corn syrup.

But the thing about this corn

is we want it to get a salty taste.

Some of these flavors we're doing

are actually savory.

And sweet and savory works,

this is something you'll find

very common in the Asian cuisine,

less common in the American cuisine.

But we can bring it into this candy,

we're doing it literally by adding salt to the candy.

So we're trying to trigger the memory

of a salted piece of buttered corn in your mouth.

We do this with a good corn flavor,

but the salt and the pepper have to be added later

and we add it on the table.

What I love about this flavor is when people taste it,

they usually have a lot of apprehension against it,

they suspect it, they feel like it shouldn't work

and then they pop it in their mouth.

And anyone who's had

a fresh piece of white sweet summer corn with butter

knows that it's truly a dessert and not just an entree.

So we made it a dessert.

We gave into the pull,

and it's a powerful flavor that's really good

and something that most people haven't experienced in candy,

but I think everybody should.

The corn is the only candy we didn't pull.

Part of the reason for that

is we wanted to slow the flavor down.

The salt and the pepper are not gonna dissolve,

so we didn't want the rest of the candy to dissolve,

leaving you with salted pepper in your mouth.

[cheerful music]

Oh.

Corn. I can definitely taste the corn and butter.

And it tastes like popcorn.

Tastes more seasoned, more savory,

almost like a Frito of sorts.

[Greg] Onto the main course,

ham candy. My favorite thing about this candy

is that the ham has no ham in it.

We're piecing together flavors and memories,

so it's a vegan product.

I love giving it to my vegan friends, 'cause they go,

I haven't tried ham in years. Oh my goodness.

The ham flavor took a long time to develop,

months of prototyping in tiny batches.

But when we got it, we knew we had a winner

because it was something that everybody identified as ham.

Some flavors, some people can taste,

some people can't taste, some people love, some people hate.

In this one, everyone pops it in their mouth and it's ham.

I ended up making a ham candy,

mostly because my grandmother always made ham for feasts.

Ham, if it's a honey glazed ham isn't just ham,

it's the smoke, it's the salt,

it's the sensation of just the way

the meat comes into contact with your mouth.

And when you put this candy in your mouth,

you're gonna go, Oh my God, it's a piece of ham.

[cheerful music] [candy slamming]

We've been experimenting with different techniques,

one of our experimentations, of course, you can see here,

us putting savory flavors in candies.

And we're currently on that bent,

figuring out what additives

we put in the candy to make it work better,

to expand more evenly

and to create that magic that candy can do for everyone.

[cheerful music]

Bacon?

[Speaker] It's ham.

So close.

[Greg] Your mind is why you taste,

just like you experience everything else.

And we can trick your mind and make your mind remember

the ham that it had once a long time ago,

the corn, the apple cider, the blueberry pie.

And because of that, the experience is yours.

So when you taste this,

it's not gonna be an experience you share with anyone else,

it's gonna be your candy that I made.

What I love about this candy

is that it goes back to Willy Wonka itself,

the inspiration, the pure imagination,

this is why I get up in the morning,

this is why I love my job.

We can do things that other people can't do,

we can do things that were only done in fiction.

And we can take it another step and bring it into reality.

We can bring imagination and you can taste it.

[cheerful music fading]