Candy Corn is the candy version of dried up corn kernels. Candy Corn is considered to be a type of "mellow cream", which is a name given to a type of candy. It is made with corn syrup and sugar with the flavor of marshmallow. This candy may be very rich in taste but ironically, it is totally fat free.
According to statics revealed by the National Confectioners Association, the amount of corn candy produced in a year is about 35 million pounds, which works out to roughly individually 9 billion corn kernels.
Traditionally, Candy Corn is known to be of only one color combination i.e. white on the top, orange center and yellow at the bottom. There are also a variety of different flavors and colors that come all depending on the holiday that it has been made for. The variety with the respective holidays that they are made for is as follows.
For Thanksgiving: White, orange and brown Indian Corn - the brown part is chocolate flavored.
For Christmas: Red, white and green reindeer corn.
For Valentine's Day: White, red and pink candy corn.
For Easter: Easter bunny candy corn colored in pastel.
It was George Renninger of Wunderlee Candy Company who invented Candy Corn in the 1880s. We thus see that Candy Corn has been around for over a century. It originally gained a lot of popularity amongst the famers and had a revolutionary look in the candy industry back then. The candy began to be manufactured in mass production in 1900 by the Goelitz Candy Company that is today known as the Jelly Belly the Candy Company.
The Candy Corn made today is still made in the same way as it was done back in the old days, where workers took the main ingredients of water, sugar and corn syrup, in huge kettles. They then added a sweet and creamy icing known as fondant, followed by marshmallow to smoothen the mixture. The mixture was then poured out into moulds, color by color and left to cool and solidify. The process back then was very tedious but today it is made rather easily by confectionary machines.
