Lemon pate de fruit not setting....ideas? (2024)

FAQs

Why is my pâte de fruit not setting? ›

As with all jam, the jelling of pâte de fruit is dependent on the concentration of sugar, acid, and pectin. Get enough sugar in the presence of enough pectin, activate it with some acid and boom, jam. More pectin will yield more gelling, and if you use enough, you end up with something that you can cut into squares.

If you do mess up a batch and the pâte de fruit don't set, you can fix it by reheating it, adding more pectin and following through the rest of the recipe.

We most often see citric or tartaric acid used in pâte de fruit, but malic acid also works just fine. Something as simple as lemon juice will work, but is perhaps difficult to control. Given the circ*mstances I do not personally feel that one can taste any difference when one acid is used in place of another.

Keep the Pâte de Fruit in a sealed jar for up to 10 days. You can also freeze it for up to a month.

Fruit set improvement can be increased by growth regulators like auxins, cytokinins and gibberellins. This effect can be obtained by natural hormones extracted from the plant itself or by exogenous application of synthetic substances.

If the sugar mixture is not cooked to the proper temperature (the hard-crack stage 300-310° F {149-154° C.} or if you are working in a kitchen with high humidity, chances are your candy is retaining too much moisture.

The best way is to boil the sauce down until it's as thick as you want it, but it takes a lot of fruit to do it that way. There are other thickeners: tapioca starch, potato starch, agar, various kinds of grain and bean flour, pectin. Each has it's own flavour and texture.

Keep the heat low and monitor moisture

If you're hoping to bring back this holiday tradition, or just want a decadent treat for any other time of year, then it's important that you don't overbake your fruitcake. Otherwise, you'll be left with the same worthless clump of fruit that people dread receiving.

You can replace citric acid with white vinegar or lemon juice. Use around 1/3rd of a cup of white vinegar, or around 1/3rd of a cup of lemon juice. You will get a mild to moderate flavor of the substitute acidifying agent.

Vinegar is mild like citric acid, and gives a similar sour flavor. To use as a substitute, start by tripling the amount of vinegar for citric acid in the recipe, and add more to taste. The reason for this is that vinegar is a much weaker acid than citric acid, so you need more to get the same effect.

Is apple cider vinegar the same as citric acid? ›

In addition to acetic acid, ACV may also contain a small amount of malic acid and citric acid. The pH of apple cider vinegar is about 2-3, which is considered mildly acidic. (pH is a measure of acidity, with 1 being the most acidic and 7 being neutral.)

Traditional pectin (labeled “HM”) gels only in the presence of both sugar and acid. It's important when making pâte de fruit that the pectin doesn't start working its gelling magic too early in the process, thus interfering with that perfect, firm-but-yielding texture we're after.

Line-up your sugar dusted cubes on cooling rack and leave out on the kitchen workshop for a day or so to dry. Once dried they will store in an airtight contain for a few weeks – if they last that long.

The first option is to unseal your jars and re-cook the jelly. Add more sugar, add some pectin, and you'll get your gel.

There are a few ways to thicken jelly that didn't set. You can add more sugar, cook it for longer, or add pectin.

Jam is set by a combination of pectin and sugar. Pectin occurs naturally in fruit but in differing levels, if you are having trouble getting your jam to set then it could be due to the pectin content in the fruit being too low.