How Hard Candy Is Made | WIRED

[Music] you have to work with flavors and smells and touch and sight but you also have to hear what's going on that balance of all five senses sort of is a tipping point where you can do just about anything with our candy we look back in time we go back to the 1800s the victorian period many of our bits of equipment were made in that time period we're pretty much the only one who has started up again using the sort of equipment tracking it down and restoring it today we're going to be making sugar plum drop candies eggnog image candies and peppermint candy canes first we do the candy canes the first thing we do is we cook the sugar it's mixed with water and we're boiling all the water out we need to use two sugars to interrupt the crystallization process sucrose and glucose if we just use sugar and water when it hardened it would turn back into table sugar and become granular hot pot we have a team of five candy makers here at lofty pursuits hurry and jake were working with me today everybody in the store knows when we make peppermint candy because peppermint has a weird reaction to your skin it makes you feel cool if anybody was in any way slightly congested or had any matter of allergies at this point they will not after that 25 pounds of candy canes only take less than an ounce of peppermint oil when we make candy with multiple colors in it we add the food coloring on the table we do this so we can segment and separate the different areas of color one of our specialized tools doesn't look like it's a tool it's a giant table the top is made out of a half inch piece of steel and has a water circulation system in it we use it to rapidly cool the hot sugar where it comes in contact with the table will cool off quickly but the bits not in contact don't cool that fast so by folding the candy together we get to even out the heat and pick the temperature we want we may want it to act more like a liquid or more like a solid or somewhere in between all right we're getting real close to stretch time next we make the amber sugar white this is a hand wrought iron hook it's thicker than most of the other hooks that we encountered this lets it radiate the heat better so the candy is less likely to stick to the hook we have several hooks in the store but the one that i used today came from a store called mullaine's which was opened in 1848 in cincinnati we changed the amber into white we pulled it about 75 times each time we folded it it trapped air bubbles on the inside those air bubbles are great because those little round bubbles reflect light back out and the random light that they reflect appears white then we start making the stripes on the heating table make sure my stripes are super even in thickness candy canes didn't always have stripes the first candy canes were white actually if you look at victorian greeting cards which is the best way to look at the history of candy canes because they showed up on them it wasn't until the late 1800s the first stripes came out and this is partially because people thought of peppermint as a white color i'm just waiting for these to actually get stuck together one of the things about candy that we have to be careful with is the colors will migrate from one part to another in the candy canes if they're too hot the red would actually bleed into the white parts of the candy and we don't want this to happen we do this by controlling the temperature and the only way we can really tell the temperature at this point is by feel we know how stiff the candy needs to be and that just comes with practice [Music] income the batch roller twists the candy as it forces it down the taper we don't want it to go too far but it's kind of useful in this case to a point because it puts a spiral on the candy cane the first candy cane is born we add a spiral with our hands but we do it at the machine first then we add the hook on the candy cane the hook on the top of the candy cane is made by bending it if you think of this it's behaving like a tube the inside white is softer than the outside so we have to bend it very carefully we use our hands in a very similar way to a tube bender that a plumber uses then we have a little guide we use to make sure they're all a consistent size and that's how we make candy canes next we'll make the drop candy [Music] we start the process the same boiling the sugar and adding the flavor the sugar plum is a drop candy where everything is the same color everything else we did use multiple colors because of this we could cheat a little we could add the coloring and the flavoring in the pot at the same time hot pot and when we poured it on the table we could pour it thinner and over a larger surface areas will cool faster it just speeds up the candy making process we can tell by the texture of the sugar the temperature of the sugar and then we add the citric acid because citric acid will burn if the sugar's too hot and the citric acid is the acid that makes the flavors right most of these flavors come with no acid in them and most fruits have acid in it just gets like impossibly thin the problem with teaching candy making is it's all about touch the consistency changes constantly there's one point that we want to cut it we want to cut it when the outside is hard and the inside's still liquid so we can average out the temperatures you can see it's like starting to become a little bit more compact but then when we want to manipulate it we wanted more of a clay consistency when we're doing the initial shape but we wanted to get harder to keep the shapes once it's done it went from a liquid to now it's behaving like a non-newtonian fluid and that means that right now it's flowing like a liquid but if we put a lot of pressure in it it would behave like a solid i still have a pair of scissors for my great grandfather when he was a tailor and they probably took two weeks of salary to buy but he kept them for a lifetime and he died before i was born the things that i own here for this candy making i don't feel like i'm an owner of i'm just a caretaker of because they're going to be here generations after me and i have to preserve them for the candy makers that follow me this is 150 year old equipment the machine is a fruit drop roller we're doing this by passing the candy through it and getting out the shape at the other end today we use the diamond shape the diamond candy not only looks pretty but gives eight surfaces to be in your mouth so the flavor spreads faster so we like this for subtle flavors like the sugar plum these candy machines haven't changed much in the last 150 years they were developed by thomas mills in brothers in philadelphia these machines are made out of cast iron they weigh 20 or 30 pounds each and the rollers are solid bronze everything needs to be non-stick on this and like a cast iron skillet we've made it non-stick by working in oil to the surface i'm going to pre-cool some some chunks over here the candy comes out of the machine onto the candy cooling table water is being sprayed on the underside of the top can't have water on the candy would make it sticky this freezes the candy in place as soon as it comes out of the machine the rollers get it into shape but it's a table itself that cools it off we slide it across the table when it's still behaving about the consistency of shoe leather it's not rock hard yet the sheet of candy comes out connected by sugar which we call flash the flash holds the candy together when it comes to the machine but now we need to get rid of it we need to break the pieces apart and we do that by dropping the candy [Applause] the last thing we have to do is get rid of all the sugar dust the remnants of the flash we have to do this because the candy under its own weight just like glass to a certain point will fuse back to itself various candy makers use different things i just use an old fryer that we bought for this purpose and that's how we make dropped candies finally we'll make the eggnog cut rock image candy [Music] we start the process the same boiling the sugar and adding the flavor hot pot [Music] i call it image candy the correct term is cut rock it was originally invented in blackpool england it's also sometimes called blackpool rot mmm smells like pink blackpool rock is sold in a big piece with the art all the way through like a stick of rock they call it what we're doing is we're taking into bite-sized pieces which is the cut rock part okay well let's go the metal of the equipment's important all of our metal is mild steel not stainless stainless steel because of the very nature that makes it not rust is not magnetic sugar likes to stick to things that are the same temperature is it and the table if it heats up will become sticky to the candy the bars if they heat up too much will have come sticky to the candy with the image candy present we needed the inside to be cold because we needed to keep the detail in place i say we should move to the table right about now mine piece is good i don't know if yours is a little hot but we have time to cool it and i did this by cooling off the corners of the presents but we want the outside hotter so that that candy can slide around it share its heat and stretch it out so the image will scale [Music] do you think that's enough for a little more a little bit more one of the fun things about the image candy is it's possibly the most creative candy we do and some of the most complex we have to create three-dimensional art that's a good shade in the case of the present we wanted the inside color of the present the light blue to be opaque so when we put a clear blue wrap around it light went through the clear blue bounced back out and hit your eye and looked more spectacular beautiful that technique is called cloisonne little boxes we're making a little box for the light to bounce in and out and by tapering the circles of candy that i made sort of like candy straws that are filled with white candy i was able to make the illusion of a bow or make the shape of the bow because what good would a present be without a bow but the bow is designed to be much taller than it ended up i let the weight of the candy being a non-newtonian fluid get it to its final shape once we have the shape in the center we pat it around with the white candy this is for two reasons one it gets it away from the outer edge when the light goes through that wrap on the edge of the present it bounces back out at you then we need to do an outer wrap of unpulled candy the pulled candy are like tiny little air bubbles so if we just cut their white candy it might crumble it might make a diagonal cut but if we wrap it in the non-wrapped candy non-pulled candy we're able to create an outer level that'll produce a crack around it when we cut it and make smoother pieces then we need to use gravity to make an even taper our entire goal here is to make a three-dimensional funnel of candy we've learned how to stretch the image down and scale it without losing the detail without losing pieces and without it distorting and that's what sometimes takes years to master next we put the candy on the batch roller and we pull it before we had a batch roller we had one person rolling the candy while one person was pulling it but now that person is replaced with high technology high technology from about 1910 and this badge roller spins the candy the candy is a non-newtonian fluid if we just left that cylinder alone it would go flat and spread out over the entire table but by keeping it moving we keep it as a solid object then we have to pull it we have to pull it gently because we pull it too fast it will snap when it's thick so we're sort of pulling it down gently scaling it with very very even pressure we then cut the pieces [Music] we do this on our canvas a little candy anvil because we're sugar smiths this elevates it off the table and allows us to cut it with our chopper and the knife hits it really hard all the pieces become bite-sized and each piece has an identical or nearly identical image in it people seem to forget that history isn't that far away and the future isn't either and we're just sort of here in the middle being a caretaker for what's around us ideas people friendships loves and if we can remember that everything's as sweet as candy you

Channel: WIRED

Views: 10,428,583

Keywords: candy cane making, candy making, greg cohen, hard candy, hard candy making, how candy is made, how candy is made video, how hard candy is made, how holiday hard candy is made, how to make candy, how to make candy canes, lofty pursuits, making candy canes, pulling candy, sugar smith, sugarsmith, wired

Id: 6MoBvV12C58

Length: 13min 21sec (801 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 23 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/ACER719x]

This man is the goat. He recreated as best as he could the Altoids Tangerine Sours that were discontinued a long time ago.

[u/coasterreal]

I've ordered the Altoids sour recreations from them - it's just as I remember. And the new flavors are awesome. We need guys like him and his team keeping this old art alive.

[u/TheJonnieP]

I love watching hard candy being made. I went to a small shop in St. Louis, Mo. many years ago and watched it being done in person and it was the highlight of my trip. I was the only one in the shop so the owner let me "assist" and I was beyond elated. These guys make it look so easy but I can attest to how difficult it is really is.

[u/probsnot605]

I can’t be the only one that was scrolling and saw this and thought it was some sort of new fish from the bottom of the ocean that comes up all fugly, only kinda bummed to find out it was candy.

[u/sylvansojourner]

I love their YouTube channel, it’s great seeing them get a little mainstream recognition!

[u/NewAlternative4738]

Bro, pull your hair back 🤢

[u/OfficialDrToboggan]

Watching candy being made is the best.

[u/Separate-Experience]

Man, Weird Al really hasn't aged, wow!

[u/BlueCoyote]

Used to live in tally. This place always hits so hard, really amazing candies and ice cream. The guy who owns it is eccentric as it gets but he's real sweet.