Sugar satisfying sweet lovers for thousands of years

Sugar and a little water, but mostly sugar, combine to make candy - sugary sweets that have satisfied sweets lovers for thousands of years.

Honey is popular as an ingredient for sweet candies and cakes, but sugar is the basis for hard candy drops, lollipops, taffy, fudge and chocolates.

Sugar comes from sugar cane, and that comes from the South Pacific island New Guinea. The sweet juice from chewed or mashed sugar cane was first savored more than 8,000 years ago. As seafarers from the island voyaged across the oceans to faraway places, they spread the desire for the sweet taste of sugar cane, and by 1,000 B.C. sugar cane plants were cultivated in India.

Arabs and others from the Middle East were enamored by the flavor and named it sukkar - the root of the English word sugar. They processed the cane juice - what candy experts call refining - and transformed it into a dry grainy product, sugar, that is easier transport in dry bulk than the juice.

By the 1200s, sugar became the basic ingredient in recipes for rock candy, bread cooked with sugar, nuts and fruits, and halvah, a fudge-like sweet made from sugar syrup and sesame paste.

The yearning for sugar sweets continued to grow, from the Middle East to Europe, from Portugal to Asia. The Germans, Italians, French and British coated fruits in sugar, and then created a less expensive version - candy with fruit flavors. In the early 1500s, when Spaniards encountered the Aztecs, they nabbed the prized cacao pods that grew in the highlands of Central America. They added chocolate to the sweet refined sugar and created a luxurious hot chocolate drink.

You can make candy at home or at a candy-making class.

Sweet Pete's in Lake Forest and Florida, candy shops with candy kitchens, offer classes and "sweet science" field trips to learn how to make hand-pulled lollipops, taffy, chocolate bars and chocolate pizza.

Events Lead Kennisha Wimer says her favorite candy is the watermelon taffy.

Sweet Pete's students combine sugar, water, corn syrup, butter, cornstarch and flavoring to create taffy treats.

Chocolate bar-making includes trips to the store's "Crush Collection," gummy and caramel candy displays for unique add-ons like fried gummy eggs, chicken feet gummies or eight-legged spider gimmies.

See the store website sweetpetescandy.com for information on candy, desserts and classes.

Not quite a candy, but sweet-as-can-be fudge, a chocolate confection, is a sensational mix of sugar, chocolate and sweetened condensed milk and can be cooked in a microwave or on the stove.

Learn to make fudge at Sur La Table in Northbrook, which offers Family Fun parent-and-child classes with seasonal sweets themes. The upcoming Valentine's Day Treats Family Fun class will instruct chefs-in-the-making as they whip up chocolate fudge and other sweet treats.

Deb Silberstein, culinary lead, offers this advice about cooking fudge: "Cook at a low flame and stir, and then chill for at least 1½ hours." Information about classes for adult-child pairs is at surlatable.com.

A sweet end to the story - although the love for sweet sugar started on the equatorial island of New Guinea, there isn't much sugar cane production there today. However, they grow cacao, originally from Central America, which is shipped overseas to markets worldwide.

Check it out

The Vernon Area Library in Lincolnshire suggests these titles on candy:

• "Sweet!: The Delicious Story of Candy," by Ann Love and Jane Drake

• "Pop! The Invention of Bubble Gum," by Meghan McCarthy

• "How Sweet It Is (and Was): The History of Candy," by Ruth Freeman Swain

• "The Story of Chocolate," by C.J. Polin

• "How is Chocolate Made?," by Angela Royston