What is Freeze-Dried Candy?
What?
What is Freeze-Dried Candy?
Freeze-Dried Candies are just your favorite regular everyday candies that have gone through a transformative process making them expand with a light and fluffy texture.
Why?
Well, why do you do it?
It's fun! Not only is it a complete joy to experience, but the freeze-drying process causes the flavors to intensify. They are also much easier to eat for people with braces, dentures, etc.
How?
So how is it made?
It's magic! Nah, it's actually a bunch of science, some equipment, and a lot of time. The machines utilize a vacuum pump to help extract the water from the candy. This causes the candy to puff up.
Before & After
What does it look like?
A picture is worth a thousand words as they say, so here's two. This shows our Fruit Bursts both before and after Freeze-Drying. You can clearly see how much the candy expands and puffs up. The chewy center now becomes this light, airy, and crunchy consistency.
Normal
Freeze-Dried
Want to know more? Let's dig into the details
What is Freeze-Dried Candy?
To understand Freeze-Dried Candy, we first need to explain what Freeze-Drying is.
Freeze-Drying is a method of food preservation. It's similar to regular dehydration in that the process removes the water from the food, drying it out. This process allows the food, when properly stored, to last many years. It is a process made popular with food for astronauts and military rations. The dried food can be rehydrated by adding water, allowing you to enjoy the original food.
Unlike traditional dehydration that works by drastically heating up the food to dry it out, freeze drying uses lower temperatures and a vacuum to remove the water content via a process called sublimation. The food is frozen down to a temperature low enough where water can exist as either a solid, liquid, or gas. Then a vacuum pump lowers the pressure in the chamber enough to allow sublimation to occur. Sublimation is a process where a solid (in this case water) is converted directly to a gas without having to first become a liquid. At this point, the food is slightly heated and the water is slowly removed from the food and stored as ice around the inside chamber of the freeze drying machine.
An advantage of freeze drying compared to other methods of drying is it leaves the original qualities of the food intact, including flavors and nutritional value.
So what does that mean for candy?
When dealing with candy, things are actually a bit different than typical food. The candies still go through the freeze drying process, but with some slight adjustments. The candies are actually heated up to a higher temperature during the vacuum phase than you would use for typical food. This allows the structure of the candy to loosen, allowing it to expand in the low pressure environment, resulting in the light airy texture we all love.
Interestingly though, not all candies work well for this process. Candies that are already mostly dry, or contain high amounts of corn starch are unable to properly freeze dry. They either do nothing, or turn into hard little bricks that are no fun to eat.
Here at Mile-Hi Sweets and Treats, we pride ourselves on providing a wide variety of different candies that all come out "Fun and Fluffy". We want you to have a fun and exciting experience every time you open a bag of our candy, so we only offer the best of the best.
