The Manufacturing Confectioner • August 2012 81 ➤ Filled, Laminated Hard Candy Making these old-fashioned multilayered hard candies requires practice and experience to achieve good quality. Ivan Fabry IF Suesswarenberatung Ivan Fabry pro- vides consulting services to candy companies. His 50 years of expe- rience in the con- fectionery industry includes roles as teacher and tech- nical director at ZDS Solingen and general manager at Drouven-Fabry. Figure 1 Producing Filled, Laminated Hard Candy F illed, laminated hard candies are old- fashioned multilayered candies with a crunchy texture that are produced by repeated stretching and folding. The obtained multilayered candy is wrapped in a thin, clear or milky sugar mass envelope before being stamped into individual candies (Figure 1). To increase the crunchy texture of the candies the sugar mass can be pulled. The production of filled, laminated can- dies requires extensive experience in candy practice, especially the art of handling a high-boiled hot sugar mass. In particular, rapid handling at the different manufac- turing steps is required to avoid any tem- perature variation of the sugar mass and the filling. Temperature variation leads to a loss of the required plasticity of the sugar mass and the filling. A temperature that is too low can cause the filled hard candy to break, and the filling to burst out. MANUFACTURING METHODS Four methods may be applied to produce filled, laminated hard candies: • The old-fashioned manual method. • The compacting-layering lamination process. • Coextrusion lamination technology. • The stream-layering lamination process. In the four methods, to obtain regular, thin, alternated layers of sugar mass and fillingkey requirements must be assured. The sugar mass (Figure 2) must show the following properties: • A uniform plasticity temperature of 80° to 90°C. • Free of large entrapped air bubbles. • Does not present a hard, glassy crust and is free of lumps. • Stable against graining. • Does not have a tendency to shrink, especially when a pulling process has Figure 2 The Sugar Mass praline filling lamination process laminated roll laminated roll wrapped stamped laminated in its outside cover candies