Soft-ball stage refers to a specific temperature range when cooking sugar syrups, occurring between and F. In addition to using a candy thermometer, this stage can be determined by dropping a spoonful of hot syrup into a bowl of very cold water. In the water, use your fingers to gather the cooled syrup into a ball. If it has reached soft-ball stage, the syrup easily forms a ball while in the cold water but flattens once removed from the water.
This consistency of a "soft-ball" is where the name of this stage originated from. If you heat your candy beyond the soft-ball stage, there is no way to correct your error, since the candy mixture will have automatically moved into the next stage. To avoid this problem, the best bet is to keep your heat source on low. This will allow the candy to heat up slowly instead of quickly overcooking. Also, it's very important to keep a close eye on your candy thermometer.
The degree range between stages is not wide, so it's important to watch carefully and remove the candy from the heat as soon as your desired range is reached.
Don't be discouraged if it doesn't work the first time. Candy making can be a very precise and tricky form of cooking and it's not unusual to need multiple attempts to get it right. Once you do, the sweet rewards of your time and effort will be worth it! Actively scan device characteristics for identification. You have to control two temperatures to make successful fudge: the cooking temperature AND the temperature at which the mixture cools before stirring to make it crystallize.
The cooking is intended to evaporate a part of the liquid and concentrate the sugar. At this temperature, the sugar is too concentrated and there is not enough water left to form syrup around sugar crystals. The result is hard and brittle fudge. To save the fudge, put it in a saucepan with 45 to 60 ml 3 or 4 tbsp. At this temperature, the sugar is not concentrated enough To save the fudge, put it in a saucepan with 15 to 30 ml 1 or 2 tbsp.
After cooking, the mixture must cool before being stirred in order to make it crystallize. This cooling period is essential: this is what determines the size of sugar crystals which, remember, should be as tiny as possible.
This fudge was beaten immediately after cooking, while it was still very hot. Its crystals are so big that it has practically reverted back to a sugar state! What happened?
Beating the syrup caused the formation of crystallization nuclei, anchor points to which sugar molecules attach to form crystals. Few crystallization nuclei will form in syrup that is still hot, and sugar molecules will readily attach to them. The crystals grow so easily, and the result is really grainy fudge. Better to toss it and start all over! It has a smooth and creamy texture, just how we like it.
Here's why: syrup becomes quite viscous thick while cooling, and this slows the movement of sugar molecules. The Exploratorium is temporarily closed. Explore our online resources for learning at home. As a sugar syrup is cooked, water boils away, the sugar concentration increases, and the temperature rises.
The highest temperature that the sugar syrup reaches tells you what the syrup will be like when it cools. That means that when you drop a bit of it into cold water to cool it down, it will form a soft ball. Most candy recipes will tell you to boil your sugar mixture until it reaches one of the stages below. For the best results and most accuracy, we recommend that you use both a candy thermometer and the cold water test.
It's also a good idea to test your thermometer's accuracy by placing it in plain boiling water. If it reads above or below this number, make the necessary adjustments when cooking your candy syrup.
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