Lollipops and Food Science

This is a guest post from Karen, a friend of This Charming Candy who was inspired to make her own lollipops. Thanks Karen!

Thanks to reading about Susan's exploits with her lollipops through Facebook from even before This Charming Candy existed, my curiosity over making these treats at home was piqued.

On the surface, it didn't seem difficult. Heat sugar/corn syrup/water mixture to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Add color and flavoring. Pour into molds. What could be easier? Childbirth, for one thing. At least I had the benefit of drugs during that experience.

It turns out, making hard candy is a lot like playing Mouse Trap. You end up arguing with your brother about who gets to turn the crank to start the contraption. (At least that is the way it went in my house.)

OK, really, you could have everything set up in what you thought was the correct way, but there could be one or two things that were just out of skew that could make the whole thing go pear-shaped.

For example when I first started, I bought a liquid flavor enhancer to go along with my flavor oils. Not realizing that adding extra liquid after boiling the water out of the sugar mixture basically went against all that is sacred in lollipop-dom, I created tasty treats that were not quite hard enough. The technical term for this is "bendy".

I tried adding the liquid enhancer during the cook. It turns out any acid added during this phase creates a substance that is sort of like the adhesive used to stick gift cards/credit cards to paper...at least before it sort of hardens. This condition is technically known as "booger".

After this and consulting with Susan, I realized my answer lie within powdered acid. Now I am in the phase where I am trying to find the right mix for each flavor. How to make candy delicious without field-stripping taste buds is a time consuming business.

Now maybe I should look for a job with the pharmaceutical industry.