Confectionery is the art of making confections, or sweet foods. Confections are items that are rich in sugar and carbohydrates although exact definitions are difficult. In general, however, confections are divided into two broad and somewhat overlapping categories: bakers' confections and sugar confections.
Candy, alternatively called sweets or lollies, is a confection that features sugar as a principal ingredient. The category, also called sugar confectionery, encompasses any sweet confection, including chocolate, chewing gum, and sugar candy. Vegetables, fruit, or nuts which have been glazed and coated with sugar are said to be candied.
Chewing gum is a soft, cohesive substance designed to be chewed without being swallowed. Modern chewing gum is composed of gum base, sweeteners, softeners/plasticizers, flavors, colors, and, typically, a hard or powdered polyol coating. Its texture is reminiscent of rubber because of the physical-chemical properties of its polymer, plasticizer, and resin components, which contribute to its elastic-plastic, sticky, chewy characteristics.
Konjac and konnyaku are common names of Amorphophallus konjac, a vegetable species native to Yunnan in southwest China which has an edible corm. It is also known as konjaku, konnyaku potato, devil's tongue, voodoo lily, snake palm, or elephant yam. It is a relative of the titan arum, one of the largest flowering plants in the world and a congener of konjac.
Twizzlers are a licorice-type candy manufactured by Y&S Candies, Inc., of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a division of The Hershey Company. Twizzlers were first produced in 1929 by Young and Smylie, as the company was then called. The licorice company was founded in 1845, making it one of the oldest confectionery firms in the United States. Twizzlers ingredients consist of corn syrup, wheat flour, sugar, cornstarch, and smaller amounts of palm oil, salt, artificial flavor, glycerin, citric acid, potassium sorbate, Red 40, and soy lecithin. Despite only the black Twizzlers containing extracts of the licorice plant, Twizzlers products are collectively referred to as licorice-type candy. Seventy percent of the annual production of Twizzlers are strawberry, the most popular Twizzlers flavor.
Ezaki Glico Co., Ltd., commonly known as Glico, is a Japanese multinational food processing company headquartered in Nishiyodogawa-ku, Osaka. It does business across 30 countries, in North America, Asia-Pacific and Europe.
Chiclets is an American brand of candy-coated chewing gum manufactured by Perfetti Van Melle. The brand was introduced in 1900 by the American Chicle Company, a company founded by Thomas Adams.
Trident is a brand of sugar-free chewing gum. It was originally introduced by American Chicle in 1960 shortly before it was bought by Warner-Lambert in 1962. It reached the UK in 2007 when it was introduced by its then-owner Cadbury Schweppes in the United Kingdom. In many other European countries, Trident is branded as Stimorol gum; it is generally the same as Trident.
Dubble Bubble is an American brand of fruit-flavored, usually pink-colored, bubble gum invented by Walter Diemer, an accountant at Philadelphia-based Fleer Chewing Gum Company in 1928. One of Diemer's hobbies was concocting recipes for chewing gum based on the original Fleer ingredients. Though founder Frank H. Fleer had come up with his own bubble gum recipe under the name Blibber-Blubber in 1906, it was shelved due to its being too sticky and breaking apart too easily. It would be another 20 years until Diemer would use the original idea as inspiration for his invention.
Swedish Fish is a fish-shaped, chewy candy originally developed by Swedish candy producer Malaco in 1957 for the U.S. market. They come in a variety of colors and flavors.
Candy cigarettes are a candy introduced in the late 19th century made out of chalky sugar, bubblegum or chocolate, wrapped in paper and packaged and branded so as to resemble cigarettes. Some products contain powdered sugar hidden in the wrapper, allowing the user to blow into the cigarette and produce a cloud of sugar that imitates smoke, which comes out of the other end.
Beemans gum is a chewing gum formulated by Ohio physician Edward E. Beeman in the late 19th century. It originally contained pepsin, but no longer does.
Fruit Stripe was an artificially and naturally flavored fruit chewing gum produced by Beech-Nut in 1960 and discontinued in 2024. The individual pieces of gum were striped and were packaged in zebra-striped wrappers, which also acted as temporary tattoos.
Hi-Chew is a Japanese fruit candy sold by Morinaga & Company.
Gummies, gummi candies, gummy candies, or jelly sweets are a broad category of gelatin-based chewable sweets. Gummy bears, Sour Patch Kids, and Jelly Babies are widely popular and are a well-known part of the sweets industry. Gummies are available in a wide variety of shapes, most commonly seen as colorful depictions of living things such as bears, babies, or worms. Various brands such as Bassett's, Haribo, Albanese, Betty Crocker, Hersheys, Disney and Kellogg's manufacture various forms of gummy snacks, often targeted at young children. The name "gummi" originated in Germany, with the terms "jelly sweets" or "gums" more common in the United Kingdom.
A hard candy, or boiled sweet, is a sugar candy prepared from one or more sugar-based syrups that is heated to a temperature of 160 °C (320 °F) to make candy. Among the many hard candy varieties are stick candy such as the candy cane, lollipops, rock, aniseed twists, and bêtises de Cambrai. "Boiled" is a misnomer, as sucrose melts fully at approximately 186 °C. Further heating breaks it into glucose and fructose molecules before it can vaporize.
Dagashi refers to cheap candies and snack foods. Dagashi are comparable to American penny candy.
There have been more than 300 limited-edition seasonal and regional flavors of Kit Kat chocolate bars produced in Japan since 2000, many exclusive to the country. Nestlé, which operates the Kit Kat brand in Japan, reports that the brand overtook Meiji Chocolate as the top-selling confectionery in Japan from 2012 to 2014. The company's marketing campaign, which partnered with Japan Post to sell the bar in 20,000 post offices, won an award in 2010. The campaign encouraged associations of the product's name with the coincidental cognate Kitto Katsu (きっと勝つ), translated as "You will surely win", and could be mailed as a good luck charm for students ahead of university exams.
Ice Breakers is a brand of mints and chewing gum owned by The Hershey Company.
