The Expert Tool All Novice Candy Makers Need In Their Arsenal

You recently discovered how to make your own chocolate Kit Kats, and now you're looking to expand your candy-making repertoire. While there are plenty of mistakes novice candy makers can make, there are also hacks to help aspiring candy makers produce delicious candies with less mess and impressive results. We spoke to Trung Vu, chef and instructor of pastry and baking arts at New York City's Institute of Culinary Education, for tips on how to approach making easy candy recipes at home.

Whether you're looking to prepare gummy bears from scratch or fill chocolates with homemade strawberry jam, Vu suggests investing in a stainless steel sauce gun. Vu cautions that while many beginning candy makers attempt to pour sugar mixtures directly into molds, this move can be wasteful and damaging. Reusable devices can help you get mixtures out of a saucepan and into candy molds without losing materials on the floor or countertop, and a metal apparatus like a sauce gun can keep materials orderly and candy-making processes efficient. 

Though a metal sauce gun will require you to shell out some coins, these contraptions aren't just useful in candy-making projects. Culinary gun dispensers can be filled with condiments, paste, jams, and preserves to be used to plate and decorate dishes and glasses. You can also purchase multiple sauce buckets so you can fill containers with different colored icings and unique flavors to inject into your recipes without having to stop, wash, and refill one device.

For those looking to make candies at home without having to invest in this kind of specialty equipment, consider using materials that can handle the cooler temperatures of the ingredients you are working with, like filling pastry bags with candy recipes, using squeeze bottles meant for condiments, or cutting small corners of sealable plastic storage bags. Though many of these materials may not be ideal for ingredients prepared at warmer temperatures, you can get resourceful with what is already in your kitchen for your candy-making tasks.