The Complete Handbook of Candied & Chocolate Covered Fruit

Chapter 1: Understanding Candied & Chocolate Covered Fruit

The category of candied and chocolate covered fruit is often treated as a single specialty item, but it is best understood as two distinct preservation systems joined into one product. The first system is the fruit itself, which has been preserved by the partial or complete replacement of its natural water with sugar. The second is the coating, a layer of chocolate or compound that is applied to protect the fruit and to add richness. Understanding how each system behaves, and how they interact, is the core of working with this product class. It explains why some products keep for a year at room temperature while others bloom or weep in a week, and why a candy that looks perfect on the shelf can fail catastrophically in a warm kitchen.

The fruit part of the equation works on a simple osmotic principle. When raw fruit is placed in a concentrated sugar solution, water inside the fruit's cells moves outward to balance the concentration difference. At the same time, sugar molecules move inward. The result is that the fruit's moisture content drops and its sugar content rises. The higher the sugar content in the fruit tissue, the less free water is available for microbial growth. A properly candied fruit has a sugar solids content by refractometer of around 68 to 75 percent. At this level, the water activity is low enough to prevent the growth of most spoilage organisms, including common yeasts and