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So I'm gonna try and turn corn into candy corn, so I'm here as the largest maize in Minnesota to get some corn
All right got some corn
Just gotta find my way out of here which way I come in this way
Feel like that sign kind of implies what happens in the corn pit stays in the corn pit When rings come off
Laid out the corn maze and have a whole collection of corn now to try and make candy corn so a basic thing
I'm gonna try and do is boil the corn
So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna boil the corn to extract the starch from it with the enzyme
It'll turn into glucose sugar or corn syrup
Now if we wanna make equivalent of a sugar we would need to add another enzyme to turn into high-fructose corn syrup
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get that so I'm gonna use a sugar cane and previously I've collected some sugarcane when I was in Mexico
And used it to make a chocolate bar
But I made a few mistakes in that I left the skin on it which left it with ironically a corny flavor
And there's a few other steps they can be done to purify it into a better white sugar
So I'm gonna experiment and try and do those as best as possible
and try and get a really pure white sugar The white sugar is important because I want to make the iconic three colors of the
candy corn first being white the one other key ingredient is a
Gelatin, which is key to giving it a nice texture and that can be made from an animal bone, which this one
We found while walking on that oregon trail to find nature on Wyoming. Not sure where it is probably cow antelope human
I don't know. We're gonna boil it and eat it
All right, so let's get started with the first few steps
which is basically boiling everything and boil the corn to extract the starch boil the sugar to extract the sugar and
Boil the bone to extract the gelatin
Let's get boiling
With everything set it just needs to boil for a few days, and then I can begin processing the different ingredients
So boiling for about two days now and about halfway through
I thought it might be a good idea to cut the actual kernels off of the cob
So it should be able to soak it out more fortunately my been bad yet, so it looks like it's absorbed most of the water
Which I'm after
So kind of counterproductive, but about a few mesh bags
They usually use with beer brewing and once you transfer into there, then I can squeeze it out
So after boiling the corn strained it and separated
It soaked it
And now I have this which has should be mostly starch I ate some of it to fully
Dehydrate into just corn starch the rest of this. I'm gonna turn into sugar
I'm gonna do that using an enzyme called amylase. This is similar to that enzyme
That's in your saliva, but it's a little bit more potent
So then better part of a day now of its converting and
No, no idea if it's actually done or not
I'm also dehydrate most of the starch that's right here
I think the best way to see how well it's done is to just taste it and I can compare the starch should not be
Sweet at all and converted should taste pretty decent
Tastes like corn no sweet notes whatsoever. So that's let's definitely starch. Let's try this stuff
Okay, let's definitely, sweeter, but also not super sweet. This is about what I expected one issue
I'm facing with this method is
that the enzyme produces both glucose and maltose and both are sugars like glucose is basically what's normally in corn syrup and
Maltose is like half as sweet, so between the two of them
It's going to be a little bit duller a little bit less sweet
So I probably want to add some extra sugar either from the sugar I made or with some, honey
I've collected previously next back to the sugar cane
After boiling and straining it I'm going to try and remove impurities through a process called carbonation
First calcium hydroxide has dissolved into the sugar solution
Then co2 is pumped into the solution causing it to precipitate out as calcium carbonate while also taking with it any other possible impurities
Next I tried filtering the sugar water through a carbon filter with the help of a vacuum pump. Hopefully filtering out some of the discoloration
Lastly I use a vacuum chamber to lower the boiling point of the sugar syrup so I can remove the last of the water from
It at a lower temperature
So there's less chance of caramelization
One last method that's used is a centrifuge to help separate the molasses and the syrup from the sugar crystals
So I'm gonna try and make a really crude centrifuge just to see clearly them do anything
This is probably gonna fail. Probably go flying and gonna have
Sugar all over my walls
But sort the shot check out these little
Centrifuge capsules then with this rotary tool drill the hole touched it to here and put them into here
And then this should hopefully spin it really fast
And we can hopefully see if we separate the two separate components very doubtful, but I'm curious
So I'm gonna give a shot and see what happens
Got it in there I
Think you might actually work Wow I dare going faster
Yeah gone faster
You know there might be
slight separation
Just on the top, so theoretically this might actually be working. I just need a real centrifuge I
Wonder where those went
Well the last of the sugar that isn't all over my walls
Crystallizes into what is hopefully some fairly white sugar
No need to make some food dyes for the orange and yellow parts of the candy corn about this plant a few months ago to
Hopefully use for this project to make a yellow. Dye. This is a turmeric plant
Has not survived too. Well. It's kind of just barely hanging on. I think this one's just dead
So I'm still a little bit of green. I don't know how it's still alive, but apparently it is
But hopefully have enough of the roots to use to make a yellow. Dye
Out till then just let this boil and this should turn into the primary yellow. Dye via the main diet
I'll be using also combine some of this with a coaching meal to produce an orange
Dye for the very bottom stripe of the candy corn
Now a quick test to make sure I can get the right shades of yellow and orange
With three Hunt all my ingredients set now I need a mold which I'm gonna carve autosum wood
After a bit of work I have eight different holes here for the candy corn. I was a bit ambitious
I thought it could do like fill the whole board and three other boards here to do a
Lot of work. I'm gonna put the cornstarch that I extract into here
So it doesn't stick it's gonna kind of fill in any pitch and valleys
Hopefully you can hopefully get some decent looking candy corn can do some test batch, and we'll see how well it works
After a few test batches to figure out the right tweaks to the recipe it's time to try it out with my homemade ingredients
Dehydrate it down to a leather, and then I rehydrate it would be easier to mix in
Finish drying the cornstarch in the oven and then ground it to as fine of a powder as possible
Corn syrup just need to be strained seem to help remove at least some of the residual starches
As for my sugar despite all my attempts at trying to purify it into white sugar
I still wound up with pretty much the same brown slightly
Caramelized sugar as my previous attempts to try and compensate for this and get it more white
I'm gonna try adding some milk and dehydrate it into a powder
Alright that actually worked pretty good. It's pretty nice and fluffy look the gelatin actually a decent job
So it smells a little bit like a cow, but I mixed together as well as positive milk powder
Hopefully lighten it up and hopefully it won't be too dark
Don't think it's being any whiter than this
It's pretty good. Or Carmel is a natural candy though, but it's kind of expect at this point
Starting with such a dark base getting the food dyes to show up. It's gonna be a challenge
first the turmeric then the coach Anil
The coarse grains and my corn starch might not end up with the best results
all right, I think this is wise I'm gonna get it and
this stuff is starting to burn so see we can do I
Have my candy court and
The end results are not the greatest so I have to say that I did succeed at making the individual elements like the corn syrup
And the cornstarch and the sugar I think individually each of them work fine, but just making the candy corn itself
It's actually pretty challenging and even with the store-bought ingredients
I found there was a pretty big challenge of getting it to the right texture and consistency while not caramelizing it
So the end result of my candy corn is
pretty brown caramelized and
different consistencies of the different levels
I can't tell the difference between the yellow and the white the turmeric dye wasn't the strongest and starting with a caramelized already yellow
It's kind of hard to judge it so I can't really see the color difference to well then the Cochiti
I'll end up adding so much moisture that never hardened, and I let it sit for a while
I'll put it in the freezer, and it still is quite wet
This is the end result not not the most appealing don't not some period water put in my mouth
But I'm going to cuz I gotta see how it tastes. Let's try it out
Definitely more of a caramel flavor than a sugar flavor so in that regard
Not not very similar, but overall. It's actually not that bad
It looks absolutely disgusting
But it tastes halfway decent these are the two ones I made using store-bought ingredients and even then it was a bit of a challenge
If I do it at a lower temperature, I got pretty decent results all the color remained didn't caramelize at all
But it's super soft and does not hold its form and it was a pain to get out of the mold even
The other one that has a little bit more consistency of store-bought of the actual candy corn
caramelized a
Little bit harder than I expected and tasted a bit
Caramel like I expected not quite there. Probably a little bit lighter women better lastly
I'll try the one that looks the most likely store-bought very difficult to pull out
Very sugary
Taste definitely taste the sugar a lot, sweeter. Not caramel II like the other ones all of them
It's the one that tastes the closest to this but still very different
I don't know what it is about candy corn it tastes very different I
Mean, it's just basically pure sugar so this point. I've made a huge mess of my kitchen. I have corn everywhere. I have dirty pots
Corn kernels and starch everywhere. I have sugar all over my ceiling I
*crash*
Have that on the floor now ah
Well my attempt at making this highly industrially processed candy by myself and just my kitchen was less than successful
This is just the beginning of this journey with a wide variety of candies that exists
I'm gonna continue this process next time reaching out for some experts for some help
And this is gonna be continuing quest for me as I proceed to indulge my sweet tooth does I make a variety of other seasonal
sweets and candies
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