Brimming with chocolate eggs filled with ooey-gooey caramel, cheery yellow Peeps, and a chocolate bunny hovering over it all, that first glimpse of an Easter basket filled me with glee as a kid. Yet, one candy in the basket always stood out to me from the rest, and it isn't even unique to Easter: vibrant, shiny jelly beans.
Recently, thinking about my childhood favorite, I went down a rabbit hole (sorry!) to figure out what, exactly, gives jelly beans their eye-catching sheen. Read on to learn what jelly beans are made of — and not made of.
What are jelly beans made of?
Sugar, corn syrup, and food starch team up to create the jelly bean's chewy yet soft consistency. Natural and artificial colors and flavors give jelly beans their likeness to foods like fruit and other candies, for example, or some of the "weird and gross" varieties that Jelly Belly is known for.
Jelly beans also contain a few other ingredients you probably don't have in your own pantry, like carnauba wax, beeswax, and confectioner's glaze. And the latter two ingredients are what make jelly beans vegetarian, not vegan.
Wait, are jelly beans made out of bugs?
No, jelly beans do not use insects as an ingredient. They do, however, contain ingredients that bugs make: beeswax and confectioner's glaze.
Confectioner's glaze, often called shellac, contains a byproduct of female lac insects. These insects feed on tree sap and secrete a resin (a wax-like substance) as a result. It takes around 150,000 bugs to secrete enough resin to produce just one pound of shellac.
The good news is, the secretions used in shellac are not bug poop. People have confused the word secretion with the word excretion (which refers to excrement, that is, poop) because they sound alike, leading to a misconception that shellac is made from bug poop.
What's in confectioner's glaze?
Also known as pure food glaze, natural glaze, or confectioner's resin, confectioner's glaze contains lac bug resin and ethyl alcohol, which dissolves the resin. The result is a thick, sticky consistency that resembles a lacquer.
What is confectioner's glaze used for?
Coating jelly beans with confectioner's glaze keeps their insides nice and soft and outsides glossy, firm, and more resistant to melting. A wide variety of other candies also opt for confectioner's glaze as their shining agent of choice, including Whoppers, Malted Milk Balls, Milk Duds, Raisinets, Junior Mints, Mike and Ikes, and some Godiva chocolates.
Bakers will brush a layer of confectioner's glaze over fondant icing to protect it and give it extra shine. Coffee beans and fresh fruits, such as oranges and avocados, are occasionally coated with it for similar reasons.
Is confectioner's glaze bad for you?
Confectioner's glaze is safe for human consumption, according to the U.S. Food and Administration (FDA). Unless you're vegan, there's no reason to avoid confectioner's glaze.
It's worth noting that M&Ms, Skittles, and a handful of other shiny candies don't use beeswax and confectioner's resin. Instead, they rely on plant-based carnauba wax, which comes from the fronds of the carnauba palm.
Before you start steering clear of candies made with confectioner's glaze, however, here's some food for thought: consuming secretions from bugs isn't all that unusual. Bees secrete honey, and beeswax goes into not only jelly beans but also other candies. So, go ahead and enjoy the jelly beans.
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