Orange slice/spearmint leaves recipe?

[CurlySue]

Some of my favorite candies are the jelly/gummy type like orange slices and spearmint leaves:

http://www.candyblog.net/blog/item/spearmint_leaves

I have searched and searched for a recipe to make candies like these. I found and tried one that included sugar, corn syrup and pectin as the base ingredients. It was an epic fail as I ended up with two pans of slightly gelled goo. Every recipe I seem to find (and there aren't many) seem to include pectin and I don't want to try that again since I failed at it already and I know I followed the recipe exactly.

The website in the link says the candy ingredients show sugar, corn syrup and cornstarch for gelling.

Can anyone help me with a recipe for these candies that doesn't inlcude pectin as the gelling agent? I would be forever grateful. I'd like to add them to my candy gifts this year as an alternative to the overload of chocolate I usually make!

Thank you.

[Kerry Beal]

Large batch - 100 lbs of candy

water 12 qts

sugar 30 lbs

cornstarch 30 lbs - dissolved in another 12 quarts of water

tartaric acid solution - 1 ounce

cream of tartar - dissolved in water 3 tsp

oil of spearmint - 5 tsp

Water, sugar and corn syrup until dissolved. Bring to a boil, add starch slurry gradually. Stir in tartaric and cream of tartar. Cook to 226º F. Pour out into a copper pan. Add flavour.

Cast at 140º F in impressions (starch moulds). Leave 2 days in a 150º F room, brush free of starch, dampen and sugar.

[SylviaLovegren]

Where do you find the 150 degree room?

[Kerry Beal]

Where do you find the 150 degree room?

I think you make it - in your dehydrator or oven.

[CurlySue]

Thank you, Kerry. I can obviously scale this recipe to my little home kitchen. Do you think the starch molds are necessary? I know in some candies the starch reacts with the ingredients to form a shell of sorts. I'd like to keep this simple and maybe just pour the liquid into a pan. I could dry in a dehydrator, but not a whole pan. Hmmm. Maybe some experimenting is in order.

[Kerry Beal]

A pan or perhaps silicone moulds if you have them (ice cube makers?)

[Connecticut Rich]

Kerry - I'm interested in scaling down your recipe to a 2 lb batch , but the instructions mention corn syrup ... no corn syrup in the ingredient list. 

Can you supply the amount of corn syrup for the 100 lb. batch? Thanks in advance. 

 

[Kerry Beal]

10 minutes ago, Connecticut Rich said:

Kerry - I'm interested in scaling down your recipe to a 2 lb batch , but the instructions mention corn syrup ... no corn syrup in the ingredient list. 

Can you supply the amount of corn syrup for the 100 lb. batch? Thanks in advance. 

 

Looks like its around half the weight of the sugar - so around 15 lbs.

[Connecticut Rich]

You rock. Thanks. I'll post photos of test batches and let you know how they come out. 

 

[Tri2Cook]

Scaling this down to a 5 lb batch is pretty easy until I get to the cream of tartar. That's going to require weighing the 3 tsp before I can do the math but it's going to be less than a gram to go along with the 1.42 grams of tartaric acid solution (50%?). I'm starting to see why a 100 lb batch is easier. 

[Fernwood]

18 hours ago, Tri2Cook said:

Scaling this down to a 5 lb batch is pretty easy until I get to the cream of tartar. That's going to require weighing the 3 tsp before I can do the math but it's going to be less than a gram to go along with the 1.42 grams of tartaric acid solution (50%?). I'm starting to see why a 100 lb batch is easier. 

 

Since it's going into a relatively large amount of water, could you measure one (or ½, or ¼) teaspoon, dissolve in some manageable volume of water and then take the appropriate fraction of that solution?  Requires arithmetic, but not a high-precision scale.  

[Tri2Cook]

34 minutes ago, Fernwood said:

 

Since it's going into a relatively large amount of water, could you measure one (or ½, or ¼) teaspoon, dissolve in some manageable volume of water and then take the appropriate fraction of that solution?  Requires arithmetic, but not a high-precision scale.  

Yep, that's my general approach to solutions that I need in tiny amounts. Just make a more manageable amount and use what I need from it. I have high precision scales so that's not an issue. I don't even know if I'll ever make this, it was more an exercise in scaling it down to see how far I could get it before some of the numbers started getting silly. At 1 lb the tartaric acid solution gets ridiculous small (.284 grams) and the cream of tartar would be significantly less which has me wondering if there's a minimum batch size below which things don't act like they should.

[RobertM]

Just found this 

 

All-Sugar Sanded Jellies

55 pounds Granulated Sugar (25.91% weight)

45 pounds Invert Sugar (21.21%)

12 pounds thin boiling starch (5.66%)

100 pounds water (47.13%)

3 Oz cream of tarter (0.09%)

color and flavor to suit

 

place the sugar, invert sugar, start h, and cream of tarter into a kettle and cook.

stir the batch occasionally until it reaches the boiling point

continue to stir and boil the batch to a good string

turn off the heat, add color and flavor and cast the batch into dry starch 

place the jellies in a drying room overnight, then remove the jellies from the drying room and clean well.

run them through a sanding machine and when the jellies are quite dry they are ready to be packed

 

[Thanks for the Crepes]

I will never make any of these candies, but found some Brach's orange slices a while back that remind me of my childhood. I am down to the last hoarded slice. They taste like they have natural flavoring, unlike many candies today. Sooo good.

 

I remember walking into the grocery store with my mom as a small child and being confronted almost immediately by the Brach's bulk bin where we would be allowed to get orange slices and nougat sold by the pound. They had many other varieties, but these were my favorites, and I don't remember the other ones.

[Connecticut Rich]

13 hours ago, RobertM said:

Just found this 

 

All-Sugar Sanded Jellies

55 pounds Granulated Sugar (25.91% weight)

45 pounds Invert Sugar (21.21%)

12 pounds thin boiling starch (5.66%)

100 pounds water (47.13%)

3 Oz cream of tarter (0.09%)

color and flavor to suit

 

place the sugar, invert sugar, start h, and cream of tarter into a kettle and cook.

stir the batch occasionally until it reaches the boiling point

continue to stir and boil the batch to a good string

turn off the heat, add color and flavor and cast the batch into dry starch 

place the jellies in a drying room overnight, then remove the jellies from the drying room and clean well.

run them through a sanding machine and when the jellies are quite dry they are ready to be packed

 

 

[Connecticut Rich]

Robert... 

Couple of questions...

What is the source of this recipe? I'm assuming it's a commercial candy maker. 

Thin boiling starch? Not quite sure what that is? 

Either way, I'm going to scale this recipe down and substitute corn starch . 

I'll let you know how it goes. 

My drying room (a new Avantco dehydrator) arrives tomorrow for more exacting experiments. 

[Kerry Beal]

Thin boiling starch is kind of hard to get your hands on.

 

[RobertM]

A Formulary of Candy Product by Norman E. Harris, Silvio Cespo and M.S. Peterson

 

[Connecticut Rich]

I took the Formulary of Candy Products recipe that RobertM posted and converted the percentages to grams x7 for a small batch. I’m doing a straight 1/1 substitution of Clear-Jel (cook type) modified corn starch for the thin boiling starch. 

 

182 g Sugar

147 g Corn Syrup

42 g Modified Corn Starch

329 g Water (approx 1.5 cups)

Pinch of cream of tartar

packet of watermelon Kool-Aid mixed with Tbsp water. 

 

Whisked first five ingredients together in a Medium saucepan and brought to a boil.  The original recipe calls for the mixture to be brought to a boil and continue cooking until it reaches a “good string”. Because of the gelling of the starch, I didn’t quite get strings, more like ropy drips.  Removed pan from heat and whisked in the dissolved packet of Kool-Aid.  I pressed a 1/8 inch layer of cornstarch into the bottom of a pan and poured the mixture in.  Placed it in my dehydrator at 150°F for 24 hours. Will then attempt to dice, clean and sand with sugar  to dry for X days until it reaches the correct dryness and bite. 

 

I’ve  been cooking a number of test batches without much success over the last few weeks. Started with pectin-based recipes but settled on strictly using a blend of cornstarch and modified cornstarch.  After RobertM provided this recipe I did a little online research only to find that thin boiling starch is commercially available in large amounts and is graded by viscosity that it provides. Using the ingredient list on Chuckles candies (corn syrup, sugar, corn starch, modified corn starch, flavoring, coloring) as my commercial model has brought me closer to the result I’m looking for, but finding the right ratio of these ingredients is maddening.

 

Thank you Kerry and Robert for nudging me in the right direction. Posting two photos of the current batch and all the test batches lined up in my “lab”. Will post results.

[RobertM]

Those are some awesome tests!  Will be very interested to know the results

[Connecticut Rich]

Sooooo... the test with the Formulary recipe didn't work out. I'm assuming (if my measurements and temperatures were correct) that replacing thin boiling starch with Clear-Jel is the culprit. 

It came out of the pan gooey and never fully jelled even after drying it in the dehydrator for 48 hours at 150F. 

However, I went back to my previous test recipe that I'd been working with (corn syrup, sugar, corn starch, modified corn starch, flavoring and coloring) and adjusted the starch ratios a smidge. 

3 parts corn starch to 1 part modified corn starch seems to be close to the magic ratio. 

And now I have a moderately successful batch on my hands. The batch pulled slightly from the sides of the pan upon cooling and after spending 48 hours in the dehydrator at 150F, it slid out of the pan easily. 

Was able to clean off the excess corn starch with a misting of water, slice it into clean squares and then roll it in sugar for another few days of room temp drying. 

As is, it's chewy but not overly gummy. No stretchy strings and a clean, firm bite. I'm thinking the sugar coating needs a little citric acid and the jellies themselves could probably use a pinch of salt. 

 

A few observations:

1. Too much corn starch and your product is crumbly and cloudy, too much modified corn starch and you have candy flavored canned pie filling. 

2. As the mixture heats up to the 175F - 200F range, the corn starch jells and becomes very cloudy and viscous. As it rises to boiling and ultimately 226F, the mixture gets more translucent, thinner and syrupy.

3. Monitoring the cook temp of starchy goo is aggravating. The temperature can vary wildly from the bottom of the pan to the top of mix. I had one instance where there was a 10F difference in the same pan. 

 

I'll get a few more batches done before I post any more photos. 

 

[Trufflenaut]

On 3/1/2018 at 10:18 AM, Connecticut Rich said:

Sooooo... the test with the Formulary recipe didn't work out. I'm assuming (if my measurements and temperatures were correct) that replacing thin boiling starch with Clear-Jel is the culprit. 

It came out of the pan gooey and never fully jelled even after drying it in the dehydrator for 48 hours at 150F. 

However, I went back to my previous test recipe that I'd been working with (corn syrup, sugar, corn starch, modified corn starch, flavoring and coloring) and adjusted the starch ratios a smidge. 

3 parts corn starch to 1 part modified corn starch seems to be close to the magic ratio. 

And now I have a moderately successful batch on my hands. The batch pulled slightly from the sides of the pan upon cooling and after spending 48 hours in the dehydrator at 150F, it slid out of the pan easily. 

Was able to clean off the excess corn starch with a misting of water, slice it into clean squares and then roll it in sugar for another few days of room temp drying. 

As is, it's chewy but not overly gummy. No stretchy strings and a clean, firm bite. I'm thinking the sugar coating needs a little citric acid and the jellies themselves could probably use a pinch of salt. 

 

A few observations:

1. Too much corn starch and your product is crumbly and cloudy, too much modified corn starch and you have candy flavored canned pie filling. 

2. As the mixture heats up to the 175F - 200F range, the corn starch jells and becomes very cloudy and viscous. As it rises to boiling and ultimately 226F, the mixture gets more translucent, thinner and syrupy.

3. Monitoring the cook temp of starchy goo is aggravating. The temperature can vary wildly from the bottom of the pan to the top of mix. I had one instance where there was a 10F difference in the same pan. 

 

I'll get a few more batches done before I post any more photos. 

 

 

Really awesome work!  Would you mind sharing your final recipe?  I want to play around with starch-only gummies, so I'd love to hear what worked for you, as well as any observations you made about how different factors changed the final outcome.

 

(edible science is the best kind of science)