Fudge Cristals

Fudge crystallizaion

Introduction

Fudge is classified as a crystalline candy. Crystalline candies are candy which contains small solid sugar crystals. Sucrose, which is regular white sugar, has the tendency of crystallizing when fudge is formed. The structure of the sucrose molecule exits out of glucose and fructose (Fig 2.). The crystal sizes are influenced on different factors. This factors which includes stirring has an effect on the crystal size (Fig.1). Each of the three formulations had different attributes, these attributes are shown in Table 1. The aim of this report is to analyse the fudge to determine the science behind crystallization which plays a role in different aspects of the fudge.

Results

Table 1 Attributes for the three formulations

Attributes Formulation 1 Formulation 2 Formulation 3

Appearance Dull colour Shinny colour Shinny colour

Crystalline texture Small crystals Large crystals Medium sized crystals

Solubility Dissolves quickly Dissolves slowly Dissolves quickly

Figure 1 Stirring effect on crystal size

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Figure 2 Compounds of sucrose

Discussion

The strength of fudge is giving by sugar crystals. These sugar crystals are achieved by stirring an undercooked solution. It can be seen that formulation two has very large crystals which has given it a gritty texture (Table 1). Large crystals exist when crystallization in the early stages of the formation of the fudge takes place. Crystallization starts to take place when an over-saturated solution is reached. A large number of small crystals are formed from large super saturations, where a smaller amount of super saturations provides fever larger crystals by inhibiting the sugar nucleation. Another factor that could lead to the large crystal size can be the impurities of sugar....