G and I are not big candy eaters, but we know candy is popular with many of our family and friends, so we did our first try of freeze drying candy.
I searched up what candy is most popular freeze dried: Skittles, mini Starburst, and carmel stuff. So I bought the first two. G also bought a giant bag of Nerd Clusters to test out.
The Harvest Right app is super handy and gives suggested temps and times for each candy, plus recommendations on which candies dry well together.
It shows before and after pics too. That made me realize I can't crowd the trays as much as I do for fruits and veggies. We don't want an explosion! Here are our loaded trays about to go in:
I didn't have quite enough Skittles for a full try, so I used up my old Cream Savers on the other half. Their drying instructions aren't similar, so it was an experiment to see what happens.
Candy doesn't take that long to freeze dry, play a few hours generally speaking. Nerd Clusters took the longest at 9 hours. They also got the puffiest.
The cream savers definitely exploded. They puffed up so high they touched the heating element above the tray. We canceled that load before it was done just in case they would expand even more. That resulted in candy that seemed crunchy but was still squishy in the middle. Kind of fun to eat, but doesn't keep well. After a couple of hours, the cream savers looked like cotton candy that has gotten wet.
Aside from that, I would say our first run of candy was a success!
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