Posted January 26, 2011 at 10:45 PM
Have you ever wondered how caramel is made? Or how you can turn simple table sugar into a gooey treat? Well, the process is actually quite simple, but there is much more going on than meets the eye.
Caramel begins with the heating of table sugar (sucrose) until the sugar turns from a white color to a golden brown color. This process is called caramelization. Sucrose has a double ring structure composed of one five-membered ring bonded to a six-membered ring. When the molecule is heated, water is released in a process called dehydration and the molecule breaks into two new sugars: glucose and fructose. As the mixture continues to heat, these new molecules react with each other and form hundreds of new ring structure compounds called aromatics, which results in a range of flavors.
There are two different types of caramelization of sugar: wet and dry. Wet involves sugar being dissolved in water and heated. As the water evaporates as the mixture is heated, the solution becomes supersaturated with sugar, which will cause the sugar to want to re-crystallize. It is very important that at this point that the mixture not be stirred or contaminated since doing so would result in the mixture quickly solidifying. On the other hand, in the dry process the sugar is heated by itself until it liquefies, which is possible because sugar is partially made up of water. This method is much more difficult since the sugar has to be heated slowly in order to melt the sugar rather than burn it, and often times special equipment is needed to create caramel this way. The most common method is the wet method.
There are many different stages that the caramelizing sugar solution goes through as it is being heated. These different stages are typically characterized by the solution’s reaction when dropped into cold water. The progression from one stage to another occurs when the temperature has exceeded the general temperature range for the current stage, upon which time the solution takes on the characteristics of the new stage. These stages progress only in one direction, meaning that progression from one stage to another is irreversible.
Following the caramelization of the sugar mixture, cream and/or butter is often added to give the caramel its creamy texture. The fat found in both cream and butter causes the molecules of sugar to be suspended in a gel-like matrix that is semi-solid. The greater the amount of fat in the mixture the softer the caramel. For harder caramel, less fat is added in order to have the mixture maintain its shape relatively easy.
The process used to get to the end product is a very simple one despite all the chemical reactions that are occurring throughout the entire process, the end result is always worth the effort. Now it is time for our mouth's to have a party with a piece of this gooey confection!