Many pastry cooks have a not-so-secret affinity for corn syrup. This powerhouse ingredient does way more than simply sweeten. The key to sizzling fudge’s thick, drippy texture? Corn syrup. The shiny sheen on these candy buns? That’s corn syrup too. This liquid sweetener retains caramel from crystallizing, provides gooey physique to pecan pie filling, and retains cookies smooth and chewy.
Even so, corn syrup will get numerous hate. However like many pastry professionals earlier than me, I’m a fierce corn syrup advocate. In most recipes, swapping corn syrup for widespread substitutes—like maple syrup, honey, agave, or another sweetener—merely received’t produce the identical outcomes. Right here’s all you must find out about this unjustly maligned pantry staple.
What’s corn syrup?
Corn syrup is a candy, viscous syrup derived from cornstarch (sure, the identical sort you may have within the pantry). It’s made by combining cornstarch with water, then introducing enzymes that convert the starches to sugars, like glucose. The extra the syrup is refined, the sweeter and extra viscous it turns into.
That’s what differentiates the corn syrup you’d use at house from high-fructose corn syrup, a sweetener utilized in mass-produced snack meals and smooth drinks. To make high-fructose corn syrup, producers additional refine corn syrup to transform a few of the glucose molecules to fructose, leading to a sweeter syrup. Although it’s derived from the identical supply as normal corn syrup, high-fructose corn syrup is sort of solely used commercially.
However again to the common corn syrup referred to as for in recipes: As soon as it’s been refined, flavors are added—vanilla to make gentle corn syrup, or molasses to make darkish corn syrup—and it’s shipped off to the grocery retailer. Gentle corn syrup is clear in shade and milder in taste, whereas darkish corn syrup has a wealthy caramel shade and deeper taste from the added molasses. You’ll find each within the baking aisle of the grocery store—Karo is a well-liked model, however loads of grocers (like Goal and Walmart) produce home labels as effectively.
What can corn syrup do?
Corn syrup retains sugar from crystallizing, a.okay.a. arduous sugar lumps forming in your in any other case easy syrup, which is why you’ll typically see it in do-it-yourself sweet or caramel recipes. Whether or not you’re making brittle or butterscotch, including corn syrup together with the sugar ends in easy, never-grainy caramel. It serves the same function in recipes for meringue or marshmallows, stopping the recent sugar syrup from going clumpy, and provides the topping on this candy potato-pecan pie a shiny sheen.
Since corn syrup stays fluid and smooth, even when chilled or frozen, it’s in a position to hold the chocolate layer in this peanut butter pie from setting utterly, which might make it near-impossible to slice by means of. It performs the same operate in sizzling fudge, maintaining the sauce viscous.
Ever questioned how Little Debbie makes its oatmeal cream pie cookies so smooth and tender? Corn syrup. If you happen to love chewy cookies, supplementing the sugar with a teaspoon of corn syrup will make a softer dough.
Nonetheless need to substitute corn syrup?
There are some instances the place you possibly can substitute corn syrup to no nice consequence. In baked items, the place corn syrup merely enhances the feel, substituting one other sweetener—resembling maple syrup, honey, agave, or sorghum syrup—is not any massive deal. Cookbook writer Rick Martinez’s recipe for Marranitos Enfiestados will be made with gentle agave syrup, honey, or gentle corn syrup.
If you happen to’re making sweet or caramel, although, swapping in one other sweetener isn’t so easy. Options like glucose syrup (a extra refined sort of invert sugar favored by pastry cooks) can’t be discovered at your common grocery retailer, and the favored sweeteners detailed above received’t forestall crystallization. On this case, corn syrup is just irreplaceable.
A-maize-ing:
