Today’s market focus on “clean label” requires reviewing all the ingredients in a product. Often, this means considering replacing the corn syrup in confectionery. But unlike many food items that use corn syrup to stretch the product and reduce cost, corn syrup in candy is highly functional. Replacing corn syrup with tapioca syrup, brown rice syrup, oat syrup, or other grain syrup is not a simple task. Knowing the basics of corn syrup, what it’s contributing, and how it’s interacting with other ingredients is the key to understanding how to replace it.
Most sugar confectionery, including hard candies, gummies, jellies, marshmallows, and caramels, is impacted by the combination of sucrose and corn syrup, or the “Sugar/Syrup ratio”. This ratio is considered the sweetener system for the recipe, and is determined on a dry weight basis. Dry weight basis is calculated by subtracting out the water portion of each ingredient and using only the solids to determine the percent content. Sucrose is considered 99.9 percent solids, and corn syrups are usually around 80 percent solids.