Roberto Martini

Hi Jessie! (And thanks to David for relaying your previous message)
Glad to hear you succeeded in replicating your so persistently sought-after crunchy effect, I presume that the code you cracked turned out to be something like C₆H₁₂O₆ … Dan Brown would be proud of you :-)

The trick you’ve devised makes sense indeed… Since glucose (the main component of corn syrup) is employed exactly for its anti-recrystallizing properties, altering the sugar proportions of your mix by making it glucose-starved evidently changed the candy structure in the same way it did for you the first time.

I like very much your determination, that, together with curiosity and intuition, make the trifecta of a vigorous mind.
I’m very curious by nature, always in pursuit of the “how and why” since I was a child – very often let down by the simplistic answers of the grownups – and always after new things to discover, learn and engage with. An attitude that invariably brings me, for instance, from wanting to better understand the extrasystole phenomenon (I got plenty, luckily of benign type) to getting me a 12-channel ecg machine, a 24h cardiac holter recorder, practicing them, studying stacks of diagnostic and ecg interpretation books, doing ecg interpretation drills and self-assessment tests… And that’s not due to hypochondria, I’m doing the same for every other thing, candy-making included…
So I’m with Vincent Van Gogh in saying “I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it”
And there, you mentioned “Cajun” – that until today I thought it was just a spice – and now I’m already curious of knowing more about distant peoples, cultures and languages. So you speak also français cadien? I had french language at school, my english is, as you can easily tell, self-taught.
Sorry for the long off-topic, but being this a not so crowded thread, I hope not being a nuisance.
All the best,
Roberto

Hello Jessie,
It looks like you got into the recrystallization phenomenon, that is usually an undesidered (and avoided) effect in hard candy making, but that can unespectedly bring some curious results like the one you got.
As you probably know, the mix of sugars used for hard candy making should always include, together with saccharose (the common table sugar) also some glucose syrup (or corn syrup) beacause glucose prevent sugar for crystallizing again after cooking.
And, usually, it is recommended not to put sugar crystals in contact with the cooking mix, since even a small quantity of sugar crystals could activate the recrystallization, hence the need to use well cleaned tools for (sparingly) stir the mixture, and to dissolve promptly any crystallized sugar deposit stuck in the inner wall of the hot pan with a wetted brush so that water vapour breaks down the crystals.
(Such is the touchy character of sugar’s physics)
Now, for some reason, in the final stage of the hard crack cooking, you’ve probably brought some crystals of sugar (or any similar ingredient) able to disrupt the normal crystal-clear solidification and trigger the sugar recrystallization. Your description of a texture hard but grainy and fast to melt in mouth once crunched reflects exactly that.
But, how to consistently replicate this random phenomenon? There’s no standard rule