Retro Sweets
We have been making Hand Made Quality Retro Sweets since the 1920's, and nothing much has changed in our goal to make the best sweets possible. There has been some modernisation, with the introduction of cooling conveyors and powered rollers and Natural Gas instead of Coke Boilers, to speed up production but this is still a far cry from the mass production lines of some of the UK sweets manufacturers, but here every sweet gets our personal attention, and we pride ourselves on making the best..
Peanut Brittle: Recipe
For the best results use selected Roasted Peanuts, if you are doing this at home salted nuts will be fine, just scale down the ingredients to a quantity for your purposes.
Ingredients:
Cane Sugar 35lb(16kg) Glucose Syrup 15lb (6.8kg) salt
Method: Heat 4.5 litres of water and stir in the sugar when dissolved and it boils add the glucose. Once this has melted in, apply the heat again and boil to 315 degrees Celsius, now stir in the nuts.
Then spread out the gooey mixture out on the cooling table and allow to cool. When solid break up and bag.
This can be made successfully on a small scale, I made some one Scout night using the gas cooker, a large pan and some tin trays to scrape the Toffee Brittle out onto.
Traditional Sweets
Many shops claim to sell handmade sweets, but there are actually very few shops were the sweets are still made using an open draught fire on which a cauldron like copper pan sits.
Most boiled sweets today are cooked through enclosed steam cookers
and the whole process of sweet making is automated. We specialise in Traditional Hand Made sweets, such as Herbal Tablets, Cough Candy and Nutty brittle. Our sugar boilers use their years of experience to manufacture the sweets.
Compared to the uniformity of mass produced sweets normally manufactured in the UK, our hand crafted sweets are made in interesting shapes and colours such as Rainbow Crystals and luminous pink Pear Drops, dazzling effects that a machine cannot do.
Mass produced sweets do not taste the same, our sugar boilers make sweets such as Kendal Mint Cake in an open copper pan for a fuller flavour using cane sugar and the finest Peppermint.
Toffee Fudge and Nougat
Caramels are known as soft eating sweets, while toffee is usually harder. Fudge is very soft. The simplest toffee is made from sugar and glucose, with added flavours and the main difference between these sweets and hard boiled sweets is simply the temperature the sweets are taken to when cooked.
In the manufacture of hard boiled sweets the sugar is allowed to stay in its original state, however when making toffee the temperature is taken to a point where the sugar is no longer white, and changes flavour, giving the sweets a toffee flavour, sugar boilers call this process caramelisation.
This process starts to occur at a temperature of 320 degrees F
Butterscotch usually includes 3-5 % of butter. Other luxury toffee also include milk, fats and butter in their ingredients.
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The combination of the rich ingredients and the care in making these sweets gives a taste which cannot be compared to sweets that are mass produced.
Liquorice
There are varieties of liquorice which have been moulded into novelties such as bootlaces or whips which are not true liquorice, but a mixture in which liquorice has been added as a flavouring.
A glazing effect can be added to give a polished look, but this is not necessary if the sweets are made properly.
Specialist equipment is needed for making liquorice sweets, a pan is needed for the making of the syrup from raw sugar and special liquorice boiling pans are also needed.
Good quality wheat flour must be used, also the manipulation process is important to produce good quality sweets.
Sherbet
Lemon Oil Bicarbonate of soda
84lb Icing sugar Tartaric Acid
Sherbet can be used as a filling for sour sweets such as sherbet Lemons or loose in bottles. It can also be found in novelty type sweets such as, Dip Dabs and sherbet fountains. It is important that the blending of the ingredients for this type of sweets takes place in a dry environment In the manufacture of crystals such as Rainbow Crystal, Castor sugar is used to give sweets with a grainier texture. .
Marshmallow
Traditionally the flavours used in the making of marshmallow sweets are quite delicate. They are also aerated giving a very light texture.
Marshmallow sweets can be made by various methods including cooked and uncooked. The sweets are usually cooked, uncooked methods can be are used for the centre of sweets.
A combination of the recipe and the method of manufacture will determine the texture of the sweets. The amount of aeration & moisture are important as is the gelling agent used.
We do not manufacture Marshmallow ourselves. A traditional recipe for Marshmallows Sweets would be as follows-:
70lb Sugar 6oz isinglass
27lb Glucose 1 oz Vanillin
3lb gelatine 5oz egg Albumen in 0.5 water