Sour candies!?

I love sour candies.
I’m not sure why the sour flavor is so much fun – but it is.

But candies are not “naturally” sour. Let’s take industrial lemon candies for example: these candies are made using sugar, corn syrup, water and some synthetic flavoring compound that “resembles” lemon, or at best, natural lemon extract. But these ingredients are not sour at all. To add the sour (acidic) flavor the industry uses natural mild acids such as ascorbic acid (Vitamin C), citric acid or Malic acid. These acids exist naturally in fruits and give the candies their sour flavor.

I normally use the citric acid which is more abundant and easy to find, and is also milder than the malic acid. You don’t need much to make a candy sour – about 3gr (~0.1oz) of citric acid per 70gr or 2.5 oz (the amount of sugar in my standard batch). Oddly with citric acid you can’t get too sour as this is roughly the maximal sourness you could get with this acid. To get it even more sour you will need to combine the other acids – either one or both.

But it isn’t a walk in the park mind you – citric acid breaks down sugars. So if you add your citric acid along with the sugar – it will caramelize in the pot! To get the sour flavor added properly you need to add your citric acid as the very last step just before pouring in the candy on your parchment paper. You can’t pour into molds as it will take too long and the candy will caramelize.

I suggest you experiment with this ingredient and try making sour candies. At the worst case scenario you will ruin a batch of candies. But once you have mastered the cooking method you will make great sweet-sour lemon, orange and other sour candies. As long as you hurry up and pour the candy after adding the citric acid – your candies should be just fine.

Enjoy,

Saar