The broad product range of the globally active pectin specialist Herbstreith & Fox includes interesting solutions for confectionery with heat-sensitive ingredients as well as for sugar-reduced or sugar-free sweets.
The market for confectionery with functional ingredients is continuing to grow. With their versatile and flexible pectins Herbstreith & Fox provide easy solutions for minerals, vitamins, plant extracts and similar. But what about heat-sensitive ingredients, that would not withstand the conventional manufacturing process? The company has a solution for this too: cold-gelling fruit gummies.
This works with a combination of H&F pectin and glucono-delta-lactone (GDL). For this, a semi-finished product is produced: a confectionery mass containing pectin without the edible acids required for gelification. The special H&F pectins Classic CS 538 or Amid CS 005 are used for production. Both pectins don’t contain buffer salts, but still have a higher pH value than usual, ranging from approximately 4.0 to 5.0 and approximately 3.5 to 4.5. As a result, the mass does not gelatinize, retaining a sufficiently low viscosity to be processed. At the same time, the quantity of GDL required to reduce the pH value is kept as low as possible.
In this application, the two pectins mainly differ in the resulting fruit gummy texture: While the Pectin Classic CS 538 leads to more solid, brittle textures, Pectin Amid CS 005 gives a slightly tougher, longer bite.
After cooling the mass, the heat-sensitive ingredients are added. The slow gelification is initiated through the subsequent addition of GDL. Processing can be done at room temperature. After a couple of hours, the fruit gummies can be removed from the moulds and packaged. This way of manufacturing allows heat-sensitive ingredients like probiotics, enzymes, heat-sensitive vitamins or folate to be added, but also chocolate chips or cocoa butter drops.
The demand for sugar-reduced or sugar-free confectionery is also increasing along with consumers’ awareness of nutrition. Yet, the production of such confectionery can be very challenging. Often, many trials are necessary to figure out the influence on texture and storage stability.
Herbstreith & Fox offers solutions that meet these challenges with its versatile and flexible pectins, such as the already buffered and slow-gelling apple pectins. Pectin Classic AS 519 gels reliably with sugar substitutes such as maltitol syrup, xylitol, isomalt, erythritol, polydextrose, maltitol, sorbitol, inulin and allulose. In addition, this apple pectin can be used very well in combination with functional additives and sugar reduction.
