Sugar – liquid glucose

ganachesugar

Two days ago, I was making ganache as a topping for cupcakes. I needed, as expected, cream and chocolate. But '1 teaspoon of liquid glucose' was also on the list of ingredients (for 12 cupcakes). I didn't think I had that, so I used 'fondant sugar' (powder sugar with a bit of water, described here as poured fondant).

Is liquid glucose something specific you can buy in stores, or is it a collection name for all kinds of sweet, liquid stuff (honey, syrup, fondant etc.)?

If it's something specific, can you make it at home as well?

And yet another question: if I would have added (powdered) sugar to my cream, would I have accomplished ganache as well (after being poured over chocolate), since I think the sugar would dissolve in the cream?

(Just to be complete: my ganache was fine.)

Best Answer

First of all- glucose is a different sugar than table sugar. Corn syrup in the US is similar but has a few extra compounds. As far as I can tell it is used for similar reasons as liquid glucose in the EU. http://www.ochef.com/784.htm

It is used for a couple reasons:

  1. it is thicker than sugar syrups.
  2. when making candy a little corn syrup can be added to the sugar solution to prevent crystallization.
  3. in the US at least, it is much cheaper than cane sugar.

You can buy it in stores here- I can't say whether you can in Belgium.

I have, on occasion, been forced to use a very thick sugar syrup in place of corn syrup. The recipe used the syrup for reason #1 above and turned out well. If it had been in there for reason #2 it would have been less successful.

In general, if you can find it, it is probably better to buy than to make a substitute because of reason #3.

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