What are the important ingredients in confectionery?

Important ingredients of confectionary include sugars and syrups, milk products, fats and oils, cocoa, cereal products, nuts, dried fruits as well as flavorings and a variety of gums, gelling agents and such like.

Sugar
Confectionary has traditionally contained the sugar, sucrose as its characterizing ingredient. The factories normally use sucrose in a number of forms: crystalline milled sugar, icing sugar and possibly a 66% sugar syrup.

Brown sugar also used in confectionery. Caramel is used as a flavoring material and for imparting characteristics of brown color.

Fats and oils
A variety of edible fats and oils are used in confectionary products. For example, milk fat, cocoa butter and oils of palm kernel, groundnut, coconut and soya. Many of these can undergo hydrogenation to produce fats of varying hardness.

Butter consists of 80% fat; about 15% water and 5% milk solids.

Dairy ingredients
In confectionery, sweet condensed milk and concentrated milk are used extensively. Reconstituted milk powders are also employed but special care in the preparation of their dispersion is needed.

Cocoa butter 
Cocoa butter has strong functional properties. It helps in contraction on solidification which makes possible the molding of chocolate blocks and bas into an appalling style.

Whole egg products
Liquid whole egg and liquid egg white are used a great deal in baking and flour confectionery, but very little in sugar confectionery.

Starch soya flour
Starch has been used for many years, mainly in two ways. First, it is used as a molding medium to make impressions in filled shallow trays, in which liquid confectionery is deposited. Second starch is used as a gelling agent or stabilizer in many confectionary products.
What are the important ingredients in confectionery?