Confectionery - Examples

Examples

Confectionery items include sweets, lollipops, candy bars, chocolate, cotton candy, and other sweet items of snack food. The term does not generally apply to cakes, biscuits, or puddings which require cutlery to consume, although exceptions such as petits fours or meringues exist. Speakers of American English do not refer to these items as "candy".

Some of the categories and types of confectionery include the following:

• Hard sweets. Based on sugars cooked to the hard-crack stage: a 2:3 mixture of glucose syrup and sucrose in water is concentrated to a plastic state, amenable to colouring and flavouring. Upon further cooling and standing the material hardens. Examples include suckers (known as boiled sweets in British English), lollipops, jawbreakers (or gobstoppers), lemon drops, peppermint drops and disks, candy canes, rock candy, etc. These also include types often mixed with nuts such as brittle. Others contain flavorings including coffee such as Kopiko.
• Fondant. This material is prepared from a warm mixture of glucose syrup and sucrose, which is partially crystallized. The fineness of the crystallites results in a creamy texture.
• Taffy. These are related to hard candy that is folded many times above 50 °C. This process incorporates air bubbles, reducing the density of the material and making it opaque. Often sorbitol, a sugar alcohol, is added to maintain moisture. Toffee, in British English, can also refer to a harder substance also made from cooked sugars which resembles toffee.
• Fudge: A confection of milk and sugar boiled to the soft-ball stage. In the US, it tends to be chocolate-flavored.
• Caramels. These are derived from mixtures of sucrose, glucose syrup, and milk products. The mixture does not crystallize, thus remains tacky.
• Tablet. A crumbly milk-based soft and hard candy, based on sugars cooked to the soft-ball stage. Comes in several forms, such as wafers and heart shapes. Not to be confused with tableting, a method of candy production.
• Liquorice: Containing extract of the liquorice root. Chewier and more resilient than gum/gelatin candies, but still designed for swallowing. For example, Liquorice allsorts. Has a similar taste to Star Anise.
• Chocolates are bite-sized confectioneries generally made with chocolate. People who create chocolates are called chocolatiers, and they create their confections with couverture chocolate. A chocolate maker, on the other hand, is the person who physically creates the couverture from cacao beans and other ingredients.
• Jelly candies: Including those based on sugar and starch, pectin, gum, or gelatin such as Lokum / Turkish Delight, jelly beans, gumdrops, jujubes, cola bottles gummies, etc.
• Marshmallow: "Peeps" (a trade name), circus peanuts, fluffy puff, etc.
• Marzipan: An almond-based confection, doughy in consistency, served in several different ways. It is often formed into shapes mimicking (for example) fruits or animals. Alternatively, marzipan may be flavoured, normally with spirits such as Kirsch or rum, and divided into small bite-sized pieces; these flavoured marzipans are enrobed in chocolate to prevent the alcohol from evaporating, and are common in northern Europe. Marzipan is also used in cake decoration. Its lower-priced version is called Persipan.
• Divinity: A nougat-like confectionery based on egg whites with chopped nuts.
• Dodol: A toffee-like food delicacy popular in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines
• Mithai: A generic term for confectionery in India, typically made from dairy products and/or some form of flour. Sugar or molases are used as sweeteners.
• Pastry: A baked confection whose dough is rich in butter, which was dispersed through the pastry prior to baking, resulting in a light, flaky texture; this dough might be used in pies and tarts.
• Chewing gum: Uniquely made to be chewed, not swallowed. However, some people believe that at least some types of chewing gum, such as certain bubble gums, are indeed candy.
• Ice cream: Frozen flavoured cream, often containing small pieces of chocolate, fruits and/or nuts.
• Halvah: Confectionery based on tahini, a paste made from ground sesame seeds.
• Alfajor: a traditional South American cookie typically consisting of two round sweet biscuits joined together with a sweet jam, generally dulce de leche (milk jam), and sometimes covered in chocolate.
• Dragée - Coated almonds and other types of coated candy.