Various candies from Austria, Denmark, France and Sweden. Candy, known also as sweets and confectionery, has a long history as a familiar almond brittle handmade english toffee treat that is available in many varieties.
Candy varieties are influenced by the size of the sugar crystals, aeration, sugar concentrations, colour and the types of sugar used. Simple sugar or sucrose is turned into candy by dissolving it in water, concentrating this solution through cooking and allowing the mass either to form a mutable solid or to recrystallize. Maple sugar candy has been made in this way for thousands of years, with concentration taking place from both freezing and heating. Other sugars, sugar substitutes, and corn syrup are also used. Jelly candies, such as gumdrops and gummies, use stabilizers including starch, pectin or gelatin.
Another type of candy is cotton candy, which is made from spun sugar. In their Thanksgiving Address, Native peoples of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy give special thanks to the Sugar Maple tree as the leader of all trees “to recognize its gift of sugar when the People need it most”. A candy coated chocolate with a biscuit center. The maker of a nougat candy from South Africa.
Varieties include honey almond, almond cherry, and honey cashew. The candies are exported to various countries. A Bangladeshi sweet candy made from sesame seeds. Also known as “Ding Ding Tong”, it is a hard maltose candy with sesame and ginger flavours. These finger-sized sticks of soft jelly candy are generally sold in food specialty stores in Hong Kong. A great deal of candies available in Hong Kong are imported from Europe, mainland China, United States and other regions around the world.
Shanghai Guan Sheng Yuan Food, Ltd. This has a soft, chewy texture, and is formed into cylinders approximately 3 cm long and 1 cm in diameter, similar to contemporary western nougat or taffy. This type of candy is made of maltose that people in China use as a sacrifice to the kitchen god around the twenty third day of the twelfth lunar month just before Chinese New Year. It is a sweet, tangy, disc shaped candy made from hawthorn fruit, packaged in a cylindrical paper wrapper. These chewy rice candies are wrapped in a thin layer of edible rice paper that dissolves in the mouth. A children’s sticker is included in every box. This fruit-flavored chewy candy was first released in 1975.