Hot Cinnamon Jelly Beans Dex+

Halloween is almost here, and my son really wants Hot Tamales. I've been thinking about that, and they are basically a hot cinnamon jelly bean, so I picked up some of this Cinnamon Oil at a local cake supply shop. After making caramel, cookies, and syrups, how hard could a jelly bean be?

Declared "As good as Hot Tamales" by an expert taster.

It only took an entire day, complete with one wholesale change of recipes and five failed attempts, resulting in three very strange bowls of gloppy gluey but fun-to-play-with "stuff", one batch of super-hard candy, and one just a little too hard. I achieved a candy that was declared "Pretty much the same as Hot Tamales, I love you Mom." :) :)

To compensate for the softness of candy made with most of the sugar replaced with dextrose, I had an ace up my sleeve.
A little-known natural glucose sugar called trehalose has a very hard structure, and did the trick perfectly. It's on my sugar page, and has rather interesting properties.

To get the shiny coat, tumbling is necessary. The original recipe I ultimately converted to make this Dex+ version uses a children's Rock Tumbler.

Rock Tumbler

What I was thinking though, is that my new prized Ankarsrum Mixer has a large metal bowl that spins, and is designed to sit on its side so attachments can be added. Sounds like a candy tumbler to me! I love this mixer; I can make about 15 lbs of silky smooth bread dough at once in it... mmm bread.... but that's another subject. My mixer did indeed make a perfect candy tumbler! Next time I'll play with possibly drying the beans before coating, and perhaps use beeswax instead of cocoa butter to try and make them shinier. The taste is just right.

Ankarsrum Mixer, propped up on a calculus book to give a slight tilt.

[Update] The Day After:

The jelly beans were a little soft, so I left them out overnight to dry. The next day, well, just look at the photo. :(  But happily they were still chewy and delicious, so we ate them all. :) When I get a chance, I'm going to watch a show on making jelly beans, and see if I can find how to fix them. I'm thinking possibly drying them in a dehydrator or in corn starch before coating, and/or adding gelatin to the recipe. That or just eat them immediately. :)

The day after making; oops, tasty, but still need some work.

Hot Cinnamon Jelly Beans Dex+

Developed from: How to make Jelly Beans

Ingredients

For molds:

• 1 packet of cornflour/cornstarch
• A shallow baking tray

For jellies:

• 21 g sugar
• 40 g dextrose
• 47 g Trehalose
• 7 g Benefiber or similar
• 1 tsp cornflour/cornstarch
• 40 ml water
• 20 g corn Syrup or glucose syrup (zero high-fructose)

For coating:

wet coat

• 43 g (30 ml) corn syrup
• red food color
• 8 drops Cinnamon Oil

dry coat

• 10 g Benefiber or similar
• 20 g fine sugar, or regular sugar ground fine in a blender
• 20 g dextrose
• 40 g Trehalose

clear coat

• 3 g cocoa butter or edible beeswax, optional

Directions

1. Use the cornflour to make the molds as shown in the video, or fill a shallow pan with cornstarch, smooth and level the top, and press the tip of a finger into the cornstarch to make wells for the jellybeans.
2. Mix together the sugar, dextrose, trehalose, Benefiber and cornflour until smooth then add the water and syrup. Over medium heat, bring to 270°F (about 10 min), then remove from heat immediately
3. Pour into the molds using a spoon, and cool completely.
4. Sift off the cornflour.
5. Mix the wet coating ingredients together: food color, flavour, and corn syrup. The taste should be stronger than the desired jelly bean flavour.
6. In a separate bowl, mix the dry coating ingredients.
7. Coat, either:
1. As shown in the original video, using all of the wet and most of the dry ingredients, then adding grated cocoa butter/wax and jelly beans to the tumbler.
2. Or use an Ankarsrum mixer.
1. Tilt the mixer base on its side, propped on a ~2” book. Put the beans into the metal bowl, and turn it on at a low speed.
2. Drizzle some wet coating onto the beans, and allow them to coat. Dust some of the dry coating onto the beans to get them separated and unstuck from the mixer bow.
3. Adjust speed as needed to get a good tumble. Alternate adding wet and dry coats, separating the beans as needed. At the end, some dry coating will remain tumbling with the beans.
4. Stop the mixer, empty out the bowl, and return just the coated jelly beans to the bow. Turn the mixer back on, and drizzle the beans with melted cocoa butter. Continue to tumble for about an hour.