Ever wondered how jawbreakers are made? These incredibly hard candies aren’t created as finished balls in a single step. Instead, they’re gradually built up with layer after layer of sugar, color and flavor until they become the jawbreakers we recognize.
Insider takes us inside the fascinating process, from making the candy centers to tumbling them inside large rotating coating pans and eventually revealing the colorful layers hidden inside.
How Jawbreakers Are Made Layer by Layer
The process shown can begin with either a bubble-gum center or a hard-candy center. Once those centers are formed, they’re ready for the part that gives jawbreakers their distinctive layered appearance.
The centers are placed inside large rotating coating pans. A hot mixture of water, corn syrup and food coloring is added, followed by dextrose, a type of powdered sugar. As the pan rotates, warm air helps dry the coating around each candy.
This isn’t a one-time coating. The factory repeats the process again and again, gradually building up the jawbreaker. The finished candies shown in the video have 10 layers of sugar and flavor surrounding their centers.
Seeing how jawbreakers are made also reveals just how much time goes into such a simple-looking candy. The entire process shown takes four days, including drying, before carnauba wax gives the finished jawbreakers their shiny surface.
Why We Loved This Video
A jawbreaker looks incredibly simple from the outside, so it’s surprising to discover how much work is hidden beneath that colorful shell.
The most satisfying moment comes when a finished jawbreaker is sliced open. Suddenly, all those separate coatings become visible as colorful rings surrounding the center.
It’s a perfect example of an everyday product becoming much more interesting once you see what actually goes into making it.
