Gummy Sweets Comparison

Customer

Sugar confectionery producer wanted to measure the hardness of gummy sweets during stoving process as a predictor of elasticity and minimise time in stoving oven.

Problem

Stoving process is bottle-neck to production of gelatine based gummy confectionery. Customer had been reliant on sensory testing to predict when sweets were at correct texture resulting in high degree of variation between batches.

Solution

Compression test using a large ball probe replicated squeezing of gummy sweet between thumb and forefinger.

• Identified key textural properties of gummy sweets through sensory evaluation
• Correlated findings with instrumental measurements
• Used hardness parameter to establish upper and lower tolerances for production

Benefit

• Removed bottle-neck in production process by optimising time gummy sweets spend in stoving oven
• Maintaining consistent product quality