Pectin is a simple solution in the production of enriched gummy confectionery, suitable for numerous functional ingredients.
Highly flexible pectins
Confectionery enriched with functional ingredients is the trend. For example, they provide important vitamins or minerals in chewable form and can easily be integrated into the daily routine. Countless shapes, colours, and flavours provide a wide variety of enjoyment. During the production of vegan fruit gums with pectin, a confectionery mass is cooked, poured into moulds, and then gels within a few minutes as it cools. The advantages of pectin over other hydrocolloids include low cooking viscosity and precise adjustable setting speed. This is associated with easy processability and high throughput.
Shaping can be carried out with the aid of starch in so-called mogul plants or powder-free, for example with silicone or polycarbonate moulds. The products do not have to be post-dried and can be treated with coating agent and packaged just a few minutes after production. If functional ingredients are to be added, they are added into the hot mass during the cooking process before gelation. The choice and possibilities are seemingly limitless: minerals, vitamins, dietary fibre, plant extracts, apple cider vinegar and many more. The problem: acids and minerals can interact with pectin and thus influence the gelation.
Highly flexible pectin for more tolerance
Confectionery pectins have a high tolerance towards recipe parameters in gum confectionery. Thus, the functionality of these pectins is flexible with difficult ingredients. By selecting versatile pectins, it is possible to significantly increase the tolerance to cations. The multifunctional, strong buffer system makes pectin extremely tolerant towards minerals, acids, vitamins and vegetable extracts. The pectin texture is basically smooth and can be conveniently set to be short and firm or chewy like a gummy. Sugar-free gum confectionery can also be attained, as pectin is sugar-free.
Pectin – the optimal solution for reduced-sugar confectionery
The demand for sugar-reduced or sugar-free confectionery is growing in line with consumers’ awareness of nutrition. At the same time, producing this confectionery can be very challenging. Often many trials are necessary to determine the influence of the individual ingredients on texture and storage stability. Here, versatile and flexible pectins, such as readily buffered extra slow set pectins, are a solution to meet these challenges. Pectin gels reliably with sugar substitutes such as maltitol syrup, xylitol, isomalt, erythritol, polydextrose, maltitol, sorbitol, inulin and allulose. In addition, pectin can be used exceptionally well in combination with functional additives and reduced sugar recipes.
