A Review: Sugar-Based Confectionery and the Importance of Ingredients

Sugar-based confectionery products have a historical basis for many cultures and sugar-based confectionery, especially soft candies, has increased in popularity in recent years. Optimizing a well-designed candy is important to meet consumer expectations, which includes ingredient information about water, sucrose, corn syrup and various kinds of sugar substitutes, and gelling agent alternatives. For instance, water content, temperature, pH, glass transition temperature, molecular weight, and natural gelling properties of the gelling agents have impacts on the quality parameters of the final product. The objective of this review is to examine the production of sugar-based candies focusing on hard candies, soft candies, and Turkish delight. The review also reports on new trends in the formulations and how ingredients affect the final product in a very simple way.