Candy maker Greg Cohen and the staff from Lofty Pursuits show the process of concocting new candy flavors by making a full meal out of round hardy candy. Using century’s old techniques, watch and see how Greg and the staff make a candy feast, including blueberry pie, apple cider, sweet corn and...vegan ham!Try Lofty Pursuits candy for yourself at PD.netHand made hard candy in Tallahassee, Florida.Check out Lofty Pursuits YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/loftypursuitsDirector: Katherine WzorekDirector of Photography: Charles ""C.B"" LorchEditor: Jeremy Ray SmolikTalent: Greg CohenLine Producer: Joseph BuscemiAssociate Producer: Brandon WhiteProduction Manager: D. Eric MartinezProduction Coordinator: Fernando DavilaAssistant Camera: Lee BergerSound Mixer: Adrien MarinerProduction Assistant: Cris CollinsPost Production Supervisor: Alexa DeutschPost Production Coordinator: Ian BryantSupervising Editor: Doug LarsenAdditional Editor: Jason MaliziaAssistant Editor: Billy Ward
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TechTranscript
00:00 Flavor is such a keynote memory.
00:03 It's one of our most primal instincts.
00:05 We can play games with flavors that people don't understand.
00:09 We want to create something which brings back a memory
00:12 because candy and flavors themselves are not the whole story.
00:16 We're just giving notes, and your brain fills in what's in between.
00:20 You're using your imagination to complete the picture here.
00:23 And the picture happens to be one of flavor.
00:26 [MUSIC]
00:31 Here at Lofty Pursuits, we make hard candy, not bubble gum,
00:34 but we're still going to make a full meal in hard candy.
00:37 We're going to have blueberry pie, sweet corn, apple cider, and ham.
00:43 Yeah, ham, because you need a full meal.
00:46 Today, I'm working with Uri and Francesca.
00:49 We're going to make round drops of candy,
00:51 and the nice thing about the round drops is they dissolve evenly in your mouth.
00:55 So it's going to give an even flavor profile.
00:58 First, the blueberry pie.
01:02 So we use two types of sugars, in this case corn syrup and sugar,
01:06 standard table sugar.
01:07 And because they both have different crystalline structures,
01:09 when they pour and they cool, they're not going to make a crystal.
01:12 They're going to make an amorphous solid, and that is what we want.
01:15 We want it to behave like glass.
01:19 I love when candy connects with history,
01:21 and in this case, it's connecting with Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
01:24 because there was a character named Violet Beauregard,
01:27 and she loved chewing gum,
01:29 and Willy Wonka made a chewing gum that had a three-course meal in it.
01:32 I'm paying an homage here.
01:34 The last course in her meal was blueberry pie,
01:36 and the blueberry pie went a little wrong.
01:38 Ours will not.
01:41 Blueberry pie has two flavors which have to hit separately.
01:44 The blueberry gets acid to make it taste more like blueberry,
01:47 and the pie crust has to give you a memory of graham or of wheat
01:52 or of something that's been baked with butter.
01:54 Hot pot!
01:56 We mostly work with liquid flavor,
01:58 either at the beginning with the liquids or on the table with the solids.
02:02 So we put in the liquid flavoring, and the liquid flavoring is mostly water,
02:06 and it needs to be in a suspension, and you'll see the steam boiling out.
02:09 This is important.
02:11 We want the candy to have as little water as possible,
02:13 so we're using the heat of the candy to reduce the water content.
02:17 When the sugar is flavored, we're putting it on the table.
02:19 This table is a cooling table from the 1800s.
02:22 It's specifically designed for candy making.
02:24 It's water jacketed, and it'll drop the temperature of the candy,
02:27 because right now it's a liquid.
02:29 We want it to be more like a consistency of a clay,
02:31 and when we're done, we want it to be a solid.
02:34 The food coloring we're using today is a liquid,
02:36 and we're applying it to the candy, and we're stirring it in.
02:39 The water is boiling off again,
02:41 and it's going to spread out throughout the candy.
02:43 There are several ways to apply food coloring,
02:45 but I like this one the best because it provides the most even color,
02:48 doesn't make little dots of color.
02:50 It's just in there.
02:53 Many people don't realize that there are acids in almost all fruits.
02:56 Blueberries have citric acid in it,
02:58 so we're adding a dry form of citric acid to this,
03:00 because without it, the blueberry would taste sort of blueberry,
03:03 but part of the flavor profile would be missing.
03:06 A lot of the flavors we work with are natural fruit flavors,
03:09 but even when they're not natural, they're often natural,
03:11 because what they'll do is they'll take a real fruit flavor
03:14 and bond it to another material,
03:16 unlike a canola oil or something that can take heat,
03:19 so that the flavor will survive.
03:21 But now it's been modified, and it's not natural.
03:24 But we work with a lot of flavors that are pure oils.
03:27 Orange oil makes a beautiful orange flavor.
03:30 Spearmint, perfect natural flavor.
03:32 Pomegranate, great natural flavor.
03:35 But some of the softer flavors that can't take the heat,
03:37 vanilla, banana, they don't work.
03:41 When the temperature of the candy is correct,
03:43 we're going to move it to the heating table.
03:45 Now, the heating table is kind of a bad name,
03:47 because we're not heating it.
03:48 You can't really heat the candy back up
03:50 without it breaking down and crystallizing.
03:52 It's more a "please don't cool too fast,
03:54 we have time to work with it" table.
03:57 We made stripes with some of the flavors.
03:59 To do this, we pulled the candy to make it a different shade.
04:03 What we're doing is we're trapping air bubbles.
04:05 The air bubbles are reflecting light,
04:07 and they're making the candy more opaque and more satiny.
04:11 So we're making these satin stripes
04:13 on a clear, jewel-like candy.
04:16 The pulled part of the candy has more surface area,
04:18 so it's going to dissolve faster.
04:20 With a flavor like blueberry,
04:22 this is going to make it more immediate.
04:24 And this is also going to get the crust flavor
04:26 to come out faster, because we want to balance
04:28 the crust flavor and the blueberry flavor.
04:30 So by doing this, we can actually affect the flavor
04:33 with the manufacturing technique.
04:36 I'm cutting up a giant blob of candy
04:38 into manageable pieces that can go through the press.
04:40 We don't want the press to get too hot,
04:42 so we can't put this through constantly.
04:44 And if it does get too hot, it'll stick.
04:47 These giant bronze rollers act like heat sinks.
04:49 They drop the temperature of the candy tremendously and quickly,
04:53 and this lets it hold its shape.
04:55 When the candy comes out of the press,
04:57 we slide it across the cooling table,
04:59 and we're using the cooling table once again to cool the candy,
05:01 because if we don't cool it quickly,
05:03 it'll go completely flat under its own weight.
05:05 It's connected by a sugar flash,
05:07 and we want it to break it apart.
05:09 That's part of the reason why cough drops are called cough drops,
05:12 or lemon drops are called lemon drops.
05:14 It's because of the drop.
05:16 I think that's probably some type of blueberry.
05:22 I really enjoy this one.
05:27 Time for the drink, apple cider.
05:30 We're repeating the process we did with the blueberry candy
05:32 in the apple cider candy.
05:34 The apple cider candy is a bit of candy maker's magic.
05:37 Apple cider is carbonated,
05:39 and we want to add a little carbonation to the candy.
05:41 Candy can't trap air,
05:43 so we're going to put in baking soda
05:45 and a dry acid,
05:47 in this case, malic acid,
05:49 which is the acid of apples.
05:51 And when it hits your mouth,
05:53 the moisture in your mouth are going to combine the two.
05:55 And just like that volcano experiment
05:57 in elementary school science fair,
05:59 we're going to carbonate the candy in your mouth.
06:01 The acid and the base will partially cancel each other out,
06:03 but you'll have just a little fizz.
06:05 Blueberry and apple cider use different acids.
06:09 We choose acids for how it makes you react.
06:12 Citric acid is a clean sour,
06:14 but malic acid makes you salivate.
06:16 This is why lemon-lime drinks
06:18 are often seen as being more refreshing,
06:20 because your mouth almost instantly becomes wet.
06:23 Citric acid doesn't do that,
06:25 but makes a very clean sour that's more fruity.
06:28 So by balancing the acids,
06:30 we can actually trick your body into responding
06:32 and having memories of being hydrated.
06:34 A possibly small bubble straw.
06:37 If you try to drink anything through it,
06:39 it will just straight-up melt.
06:41 [laughs]
06:45 When we pull the candy, we use the hook.
06:48 This one's from the 1800s.
06:50 We're folding air into the candy.
06:52 Candy can go from a yellowish color
06:55 to a brilliant bright white.
06:57 We got a little bit of white from the baking soda,
07:00 but this is really gonna give it a real brilliant white color.
07:04 That's done by trapping the air bubbles.
07:06 What you're seeing is the light reflected off the bubbles.
07:09 We're taking the bubbles, and we're trapping them as a solid,
07:12 and it's great because it also creates more surface area.
07:15 We actually end up with a greater volume of candy
07:18 because it fluffs the candy up,
07:20 and when it goes into your mouth,
07:22 all those little air bubbles dissolve faster.
07:24 So in this case, the carbonation will be more apparent.
07:27 Flavors are also seasonal,
07:29 and the assortment flavors we have here
07:31 are seasonal to a harvest.
07:33 The apples are being picked, the corn is being picked.
07:35 It's time for the ham to be taken care of.
07:37 And we're doing this all as a feast,
07:39 and this is why we associate the flavors of the feast,
07:41 because this is when they were ready historically.
07:44 We're tying them all together...
07:46 in candy.
07:48 Oh, now I taste the cider.
07:55 That was good.
07:57 On to the vegetable, corn.
08:00 Corn as a candy sounds crazy in the United States,
08:03 but if you go to Europe, and specifically Asia,
08:05 corn is a common flavor of candy.
08:08 And of course, it actually has corn in it,
08:10 because we're using corn syrup.
08:12 But the thing about this corn is we want it to get a salty taste.
08:15 Some of these flavors we're doing are actually savory,
08:17 and sweet and savory works.
08:19 This is something you'll find very common in the Asian cuisine,
08:22 less common in the American cuisine.
08:24 But we can bring it into this candy.
08:26 We're doing it literally by adding salt to the candy.
08:29 So we're trying to trigger the memory of a salted piece of buttered corn in your mouth.
08:33 We do this with a good corn flavor,
08:35 but the salt and the pepper have to be added later.
08:38 And we add it on the table.
08:40 What I love about this flavor is when people taste it,
08:43 they usually have a lot of apprehension against it.
08:46 They suspect it.
08:47 They feel like it shouldn't work.
08:49 And then they pop it in their mouth.
08:51 And anyone who's had a fresh piece of white, sweet summer corn with butter
08:54 knows that it's truly a dessert and not just an entree.
08:57 So we made it a dessert.
08:59 We gave in to the pull, and it's a powerful flavor that's really good
09:03 and something that most people haven't experienced in candy,
09:06 but I think everybody should.
09:08 The corn is the only candy we didn't pull.
09:10 Part of the reason for that is we wanted to slow the flavor down.
09:14 The salt and the pepper are not going to dissolve.
09:16 So we didn't want the rest of the candy to dissolve,
09:19 leaving you with salt and pepper in your mouth.
09:23 Ooh.
09:26 Corn?
09:27 I can definitely taste the corn and butter.
09:30 It tastes like popcorn.
09:31 It tastes more seasoned, more savory,
09:35 almost like a Frito of sorts.
09:38 On to the main course, ham candy.
09:41 My favorite thing about this candy is that the ham has no ham in it.
09:45 We're piecing together flavors and memories, so it's a vegan product.
09:49 I love giving it to my vegan friends because they go,
09:52 "I haven't tried ham in years. Oh, my goodness."
09:54 The ham flavor took a long time to develop,
09:57 months of prototyping in tiny batches.
10:00 But when we got it, we knew we had a winner
10:03 because it was something that everybody identified as ham.
10:06 Some flavors, some people can taste, some people can't taste,
10:09 some people love, some people hate.
10:11 In this one, everyone pops it in their mouth, and it's ham.
10:15 I ended up making a ham candy,
10:17 mostly because my grandmother always made ham for feasts.
10:20 Ham, if it's a honey-glazed ham, isn't just ham.
10:23 It's the smoke. It's the salt.
10:25 It's the sensation of just the way the meat comes into contact with your mouth.
10:31 And when you put this candy in your mouth, you're going to go,
10:34 "Oh, my God, it's a piece of ham."
10:36 We've been experimenting with different techniques.
10:40 One of our experimentations, of course, you can see here,
10:43 us putting savory flavors in candies.
10:46 And we're currently on that bent,
10:49 figuring out what additives we put in the candy to make it work better,
10:52 to expand more evenly,
10:54 and to create that magic that candy can do for everyone.
10:58 Bacon.
11:01 It's ham.
11:03 It's hourglass.
11:05 Your mind is why you taste, just like you experience everything else.
11:09 And we can trick your mind and make your mind remember
11:12 the ham that it had once a long time ago,
11:15 the corn, the apple cider, the blueberry pie.
11:17 And because of that, the experience is yours.
11:20 So when you taste this,
11:22 it's not going to be an experience you share with anyone else.
11:24 It's going to be your candy that I made.
11:27 What I love about this candy is that it goes back to Willy Wonka itself.
11:31 The inspiration, the pure imagination.
11:34 This is why I get up in the morning.
11:36 This is why I love my job.
11:38 We can do things that other people can't do.
11:40 We can do things that were only done in fiction.
11:42 And we can take it another step and bring it into reality.
11:45 We can bring imagination, and you can taste it.
11:48 (gentle music)
11:50 (upbeat music)