Freeze Dried Candy: A Unique Twist on Sweet Delights

Since the invention of the Hershey's bar and the candy rooms in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the world of confectionery has seemed amazing and wondrous, but the next breakthrough is upon us. It is freeze dried candy, a whole new way of preparing candy candy making.

What is Freeze Dried Candy?

Freeze drying (also called lyophilisation or sublimation) removes water from a substance that has been frozen to ice, typically by first lowering pressure and raising the temperature, and then slowly raising the temperature. When it comes to candy, this process turns your favourite treats into an entirely different type of food: freeze dried candy is the same shape, colour and contains the same amount of products – but with very different textures and much more intense flavours.

What the freeze-drying process really does is alter its texture while preserving it. That's why it is such a reliable and widely used method of food preservation for human space flights, for summer-long camping foods, and in other situations where shelf life spans need to be extended.

How to Freeze Dry Candy

If you want to freeze dry your candy, it takes a machine: a freeze dryer. A freeze dryer has the ability to flash-freeze the candy, then pull a vacuum around the candy, then, after the vacuum is more or less complete, gently warm the candy so that the ice sublimes, going from a solid directly to a gas to go into the collector. The water that is in the candy turns to ice, then goes directly to a gas, skipping the liquid phase altogether.

Here's a simplified step-by-step process:

Preparation: Place your selected sweets on the vacuum trays of the freeze dryer. Take care not to let them touch each other. This will allow them to be properly freeze dried.

Freezing: The freeze dryer has now cooled down to well below freezing and all that water in the candy has become ice.

A Vacuum Is Created: After freezing the candy, the machine creates a vacuum around the candy.

Sublimation: The machine gently warms the frozen candy, causing the ice to sublimate.

And that's it! Finished candy that's ready to eat!

Freeze Dry Candy Machine

If you're interested in making freeze dried candy at home, you'll have to honestly ask yourself if it's worth the expense of getting a freeze dryer. If your answer is yes, I assure you that they're not a bad investment. They come in different shapes and sizes and offer different capacities depending on one's needs. Some of the brands out there include Harvest Right and Labconco.

Remember, this is not your blender, this is a freeze dryer, a complex piece of equipment with technology to move water from solid straight to gaseous state bypassing the liquid phase, so it will take some practice and a bit of getting used to.

The Magic of Freeze Dried Candies

While it would be obvious for us to reconstitute the candy with saliva, the surprise and delight of freeze dried (and sugar coated) candy comes from defying expectations – chewy candies might be crunchy and rock-like candies might be unexpectedly crumbly and porous.

Their freeze-dried counterparts, from Skittles to Starbursts to Gummy Bears to chocolate, are nothing short of dazzling. The candies make for an exciting new experience for the taste buds, and also a fun way to reacquaint yourself with your old friend: sweets.