I've noticed that many pate de fruit recipies call for a small amount of glucose in addition to sugar. My local store didn't have any glucose, but I have glucose syrup around. Can I use glucose syrup in place of glucose (I'm assuming they mean the dry kind)? If so, what ratio should I use?
As an example, this is one recipe: http://trissalicious.com/2010/02/25/family-gems/
This question isn't specific to that recipe, though. Most pate de fruit recipes seem to call for glucose.
In boiled syrup candies like this one, glucose is often used as an insurance policy to keep all the rest of the sucrose in the recipe from crystallizing. The dissimilar sugar molecules in the solution interfere with the sucrose crystallization and they instead form smaller crystals and the candy has a smoother texture.
You can easily use glucose syrup in this recipe. As it adds a little water you will have to boil the syrup a little longer to reach the desired concentration (and thus temperature.)
As far as the ratio- You can look at the label of your syrup to see the glucose content and use that as a starting point but don't worry about being too exact in your conversion. As the glucose is simply for interference small variations aren't going to make much of a difference. Often when I am making candies like this I will just eyeball a tablespoon or two depending on how much candy I am making.
