What kinds of sugar do we use in our candy?
I used to think sugar was simple. It’s a naturally occuring carbohydrate found in fruits and vegetables, right? Well lately it’s gotten more confusing in the popular press. What’s the difference between – sucrose, fructose, dextrose, maltose…? These are all different versions of sugar that are digested in different ways and at that I’ll leave the rest of the explanation to the chemists. At Zingerman’s Candy Manufactory we choose our sugar based on its flavor and how it reacts to cooking. We use white granulated cane sugar, muscovado brown sugar from Mauritius, corn syrup (not high fructose) and honey. We use cane sugar because of it’s clear flavor and how it reacts to cooking which is different from, say, beet sugar. Muscovado brown sugar has an incredible rich and varied flavor relative to typical brown sugar available in our grocery stores. Most American brown sugar is made by processing sugar into white sugar and then adding molasses back in. Muscovado brown sugar is never processed all the way to white sugar and you can tell. It’s very caramel-like and flavorful. Honey has great and very different flavor from sugar so we use it where we want its distinctiveness.
September 10th, 2009 at 5:17 am
What exactly is the nougat you use in the Original Zang bars, and how is it made?
September 17th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Thanks for your question, Dana. Nougat is what we call an aeration. Basically it is sugar with air in it. Think of marshmallows. We make this nougat by cooking honey and sugar and when it reaches the right temperature we slowly add it to whipping egg whites and it gets really thick – thicker and denser than marshmallows. The nougat in the Original is further flavored with sea salt and peanut butter.