Popping candy makes a really fun addition to chocolate bars! It will fizz and crackle in the mouth. This version is coated in cocoa butter, which acts as a barrier to prevent the popping candy from going soft when exposed to air.

What the Cocoa Butter Coating Does 

Popping candy is sugar with carbon dioxide trapped inside it, and moisture is what sets it off. Left bare, it will take up water from the air, from a cream or from a fruit puree, and the crackle disappears. Coating each crystal in cocoa butter puts a layer of fat between the sugar and the water. That buys you time, and it lets the candy work in places the uncoated version cannot go. Our specification puts the limit at 3% moisture in the finished application.

How to Use Cocoa Butter Coated Popping Candy

This is the choice for ice cream, gelato and chilled desserts. Add it at the very end of churning, or ripple it through as the ice cream leaves the machine, so the coating is not broken up by the blade. In
a plated dessert, scatter it at service rather than the morning before. It works in chocolate too, exactly as the uncoated one does, at around 30 to 50g a kilo folded into tempered couverture. Cocoa butter softens at body temperature, so handling it with warm hands or over a hot bain-marie strips off the coating.

Troubleshooting

Store the closed bottle dry, at 60 to 65% relative humidity, and keep production at 22 to 24C with the room at 35 to 40%. An unopened bottle keeps for a year; once it is open, use it the same day. One thing to watch on the diet side: this version contains milk, because the coating is made with lactose. It suits vegetarians
but not vegans.

Pairings and Ideas

The coating is what makes this popping candy perfect for ice cream and desserts. A few ideas to try:

• Rippled into a dark chocolate gelato at the end of churning
• Scattered over a chocolate tart at service
• Through a soft-scoop vanilla base with our toffee pieces
• On a plated dessert with a hot sauce poured at the table
• In a moulded bar, where it behaves like the uncoated version
• Folded into a semifreddo or a parfait