Abstract: Liquid center filled confections, such as gummy or jelly candies or fruit snacks are continuously produced by co-deposition into a mold without candy tailing to obtain products with substantially uniform top and bottom walls and little, if any, shell breakage and liquid filling leakage or bleed-out problems. Excessive vertical decentering of the filling caused by substantial differences in specific gravity between the liquid filling component and the shell component and its accompanying production of thin or weak shell walls is substantially reduced or eliminated. A non-gellable liquid filling is deposited vertically off-center within a gellable shell, and the amount of sinking or floating is controlled so as to achieve an at least substantially centered product. The filling migration is limited by rapidly cooling the shell component below its gelling or setting temperature by use of a much colder filling component which itself does not gel or set at low temperatures.

Abstract: A method provides a dry granular sugar ingredient, which improves the production of compressed, tableted confection products by enabling them to be formed with a higher initial strength to permit improved handling and packaging with fewer broken and chipped tablets. In the first part of the process, sucrose is ground to a suitable size for processing in the screw-fed mixer. Simultaneously, a corn syrup solution is prepared for mixing with the sucrose in the mixer. Both the ground sucrose and the corn syrup solution are then fed to the screw-fed mixer. After achieving uniform blending of the ingredients, the moist mixture is dropped at to conveyor which brings it to a sieve, which breaks up lumps prior to feeding to a vibratory bed drier in the preferred form. From the drier, the material is passed to a screen separator where the particle size range for the product is finalized. Correctly sized product is recovered and mixed with flavor to be pressed into a candy.

Abstract: A machine for continuously depositing a sorbitol-sweetened hard candy confection which allows the manufacture of such hard candies in a continuous commercial high volume operation. The machine deposits the hard crystalline candies from an aqueous sorbitol solution having a crystalline seeding material therein, such that the sorbitol solution must be maintained in the depositing machine within a relatively narrow temperature range to prevent rapid thickening of the solution at too low temperatures and destruction of the crystalline seeding materials at too high temperatures. The machine includes a heated hopper for the aqueous sorbitol solution and a heated depositing base, through which the aqueous sorbitol solution is deposited through an array of nozzles into candy molds positioned therebeneath. The depositing base is fabricated with heating medium passageways therein, through which a heating medium is circulated.

Abstract: The sweetness of a chewing gum containing aspartame is stabilized by applying onto the chewing gum surface a suspension of aspartame in a liquid vehicle comprising ethyl alcohol and ethyl acetate.

Abstract: An improved process for producing gum base having a hard elastomer component by plasticizing the hard elastomer in the presence of a filler material prior to subjecting the hard elastomer to intensive mixing.

Abstract: A coextruded chewing gum is provided which includes an extruded center portion surrounded by and bonded to an extruded outer shell portion. The center portion of the coextruded chewing gum may contain increased amounts of flavor, substantially greater than that ordinarily employed in chewing gums of conventional structure, and may have a different density than the outer shell portion to provide a textural difference upon chewing.