Sweet Baking Recipes

Confectionery, also called sweets or candy is sweet food. The term varies among English-speaking countries. In general, though, confectionery is divided into two broad and somewhat overlapping categories, bakers' confections and sugar confections.

Bakers' confectionery, also called flour confections, includes principally sweet pastries, cakes, and similar baked goods. In the Middle East and Asia, flour-based confections are more dominant.

Sugar confectionery includes sweets, candied nuts, chocolates, chewing gum, sweetmeats, pastillage, and other confections that are made primarily of sugar. In some cases, chocolate confections (confections made of chocolate) are treated as a separate category, as are sugar-free versions of sugar confections. The words candy (US and Canada), sweets (UK and Ireland), and lollies (Australia and New Zealand) are common words for the most common varieties of sugar confectionery.

The confectionery industry also includes specialized training schools and extensive historical records. Traditional confectionery goes back to ancient times, and continued to be eaten through the Middle Ages into the modern era.

Bakers' confectionery includes sweet baked goods, especially those that are served for the dessert course. Bakers' confections are sweet foods that feature flour as a main ingredient and are baked. Major categories include cakes, sweet pastries, doughnuts, scones, and cookies.

Sugar confectionery items include sweets, lollipops, candy bars, chocolate, cotton candy, and other sweet items of snack food. Some of the categories and types of sugar confectionery include the following:[9]

Caramels: Derived from a mixture of sucrose, glucose syrup, and milk products. The mixture does not crystallize, thus remains tacky.
Chocolates: Bite-sized confectioneries generally made with chocolate.
Divinity: A nougat-like confectionery based on egg whites with chopped nuts.
Dodol: A toffee-like food delicacy popular in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines
Dragée: Sugar-coated almonds and other types of sugar panned candy.
Fondant: Prepared from a warm mixture of glucose syrup and sucrose, which is partially crystallized. The fineness of the crystallites results in a creamy texture.
Fudge: Made by boiling milk and sugar to the soft-ball stage. In the US, it tends to be chocolate-flavored.
Halvah: Confectionery based on tahini, a paste made from ground sesame seeds.
Hard candy: Based on sugars cooked to the hard-crack stage. Examples include suckers (known as boiled sweets in British English), lollipops, jawbreakers (or gobstoppers), lemon drops, peppermint drops and disks, candy canes, rock candy, etc. Also included are types often mixed with nuts such as brittle. Others contain flavorings including coffee such as Kopiko.
Ice cream: Frozen, flavoured cream, often containing small pieces of chocolate, fruits and/or nuts.
Jelly candies: Including those based on sugar and starch, pectin, gum, or gelatin such as Turkish delight (lokum), jelly beans, gumdrops, jujubes, gummies, etc.
Liquorice: Containing extract of the liquorice root. Chewier and more resilient than gum/gelatin candies, but still designed for swallowing. For example, Liquorice allsorts. Has a similar taste to star anise.
Marshmallow: "Peeps" (a trade name), circus peanuts, fluffy puff, Jet-Puffed Marshmallows etc.
Marzipan: An almond-based confection, doughy in consistency, served in several different ways.
Mithai: A generic term for confectionery in India, typically made from dairy products and/or some form of flour. Sugar or molasses are used as sweeteners.
Tablet: A crumbly milk-based soft and hard candy, based on sugars cooked to the soft ball stage. Comes in several forms, such as wafers and heart shapes. Not to be confused with tableting, a method of candy production.
Taffy or chews: A candy that is folded many times above 120 °F (50 °C), incorporating air bubbles thus reducing its density and making it opaque.