Candies and Confections

I've learned a lot about how candies are made since I've been experimenting with these sweeteners.

The difficulty is that most candies are the result of the particular characteristics of refined white sugar. I read a really interesting book on the history of candymaking. Even in the days when cane sugar was sold in an unrefined state, the first step in most candy recipes was to refine the sugar into something like the white sugar we buy today.

The main characteristic that is needed is the ability to "crack", which means that when the sweetener is heated, it will melt into a molten form that will become hard when it cools. There are various stages that sugar goes through as it heats to different temperatures. A lower temperature will create a candy such as chewy toffee, and the higher temperatures create hard candies such as a candy cane.

Candies can only be made from the sweeteners that crack when heated, or which, like fudge, can be made by adding sweetener to other ingredients.

I'm still experimenting with this, but have already discovered some delicious ways to use natural sweeteners to make candy. I'm sure more will be coming.