Cooking the Sponge Candy center

This series of pictures depicts how the Sponge Candy center was cooked prior to 2005. It’s pretty much the way I’ve done it for 20 years. In late Fall of 2005 I added a kettle lifter and more changes are planned in the next few years that will streamline the procedure to allow greater efficiency. Let there be no doubt, both the essentials of the process and the resulting Sponge Candy center will remain unchanged.

I start the cook with a measured amount of water in a 20 inch copper kettle. The candy stove’s btu output is unknown since it is older than I am but there are dozens of gas nozzles streaming 3 inch jets of flame. It cost about 10 cents a minute for the natural gas to run the stove 15 years ago. I don’t really want to know what it costs now.

The corn syrup has already been added. Old-time candymakers referred to this as “glue”, short for glucose but more descriptive of it’s stickiness. Today it is commonly refered to in the industry as corn sweetener. Shown is a measured amount of sugar being added.

An occasional quick stir with the paddle prevents scorching while the sugar dissolves. The paddle is made from maple, a hard, tough wood. Even so, I used to wear away inches of paddle while stirring various candies over the course of a decade. Now when constant stirring is required I have equipment that does it.

The ingredients for the syrup are totally mixed and have come to a rolling boil. The boil will self-stir the syrup through out the rest of the cook. When the syrup has reached the soft crack stage, it is removed from the stove to cool. I use a thermometer which is much more accurate than water testing the syrup stage. For some candies, a thermometer isn’t accurate enough and the concentration of sugar has to be measured with a refractometer.

The cooked syrup is stirred to cool before any further ingredients are added. It’s not a constant stirring because I’m usually busy preparing for pouring the batch or preparing for the next batch. The thermometer is closely monitored throughout the cooling process.

After the syrup has been cooled, Gelatin is stirred in. The reaction is dramatic when the gelatin begins to dissolve in the hot syrup, the water content flashes to steam. The lower hand on the paddle does feel the heat but it’s necessary to stir aggressively and that can’t be done with an upside-down baseball bat grip.

Still stirring the gelatin but with the steam flash and the rapid stirring of the batch, the paddle and my hand almost fade away in the picture. The purpose of the gelatin is to add “body” to the syrup (make more viscous). While you won’t often see this step in various home made recipes, this is a very necessary step when making very large batches of Sponge Candy.

Next, the baking soda is stirred in. There is an immediate reaction as the baking soda begins to release carbon dioxide and the bubbles are trapped in the viscous syrup. The color changes from a deep brown to a golden yellow. Stirring is very heavy work at this point but it is important to evenly mix the baking soda in.

The batch is immediately poured into the form because it is visibly rising in the kettle. The batch and kettle each weigh 45 pounds for a total of 90 pounds so pouring sponge always required two people until I got the kettle lifter mentioned in the first paragraph.

This picture illustrates just how heavy and sticky the hot sponge mass has become. Once the kettle is scraped into the form it has to be cleaned. Cleaning is done on the stove with steam using high heat, a small amount of water and a tight fitting lid. It takes a little less than 10 minutes to get everything cleaned up and ready to go again.

Meanwhile the sponge mass rises dramatically in the form, increasing in size by approximately four times over a two to three hour period and then will fall back a little and harden. Because of the massive size of the batch it will take at least 36 hours for the center of the batch to completely set and cool. This means I have to cook a batch at least two days before it can be cut and coated with chocolate.

I hope you enjoyed this brief tour or the candy kitchen while Sponge Candy was being cooked. Please feel free to make comments or ask questions in the comments below. To be continued in the future with the following posts:

Cutting the Sponge Candy center [future link]
Coating the Sponge Candy center [future link]

Please check back often!