Applications
Bakery
Features / Benefits
C✩Dex® is used to balance the sweetness, influence the coloring, extend shelf life, improve fermentation and improve eating qualities and texture.
In traditional bread, the addition of dextrose provides a direct source of fermentable sugar. Any residual dextrose will contribute to tenderize the crumb and enrich the crust color.
In biscuit doughs, dextrose provides rapid coloring and excellent crispness coupled with an anti-oxidative effect which improves shelf life.
The addition of dextrose to icings reduces their tendency to dry out while increasing their smoothness.
In creams and fillings, dextrose can replace all the sucrose to deliver the desired lightness and pleasant eating qualities. In butter cream dextrose shortens the texture and delicately balances sweetness and flavor.
Confectionery
Features / Benefits
As dextrose is a reducing sugar, products containing milk protein (such as toffee) will undergo color enrichment when dextrose is included in their formulation (Maillard reaction). Dextrose is also used in confectionery applications to bring out (fruity) flavors, to provide a light cooling effect and to balance sweetness. C✩Dex® also brings important process efficiencies.
In marshmallows, it has a tendering effect on texture and reduces the viscosity, thereby improving the whipping properties.
Dextrose can be the sole sweetener in powdered centers for hard boiled candies, as the shape of the dextrose crystal ensures trouble-free filling and handling on the machine. The cooling effect complements the flavors, especially fruity and minty flavors.
In candy coatings, dextrose can reduce the panning time up to 20%, and can also decrease the drying time and positively influence the finishing and polishing time.
Beverages
Features / Benefits
In the brewing of low-calorie beers, the addition of rapidly fermentable dextrose to the wort obtained from malt and other adjuncts increases the percentage of sugar immediately available for fermentation, resulting in a low-calorie beer with normal alcohol content.
Specialty beers with higher alcohol content are produced with up to three fermentation steps. The final fermentation takes place inside the bottle along with an additional amount of yeast. Dextrose is the ideal sugar, as it is immediately available for fermentation.
In soft drinks made from concentrated or pulp fruit, dextrose can carefully regulate the sweetness and flavor balance in function of the specific fruits used. Furthermore, dextrose is entirely compatible with high-intensity sweeteners.
In energy and sports drinks, dextrose provides easily digestible carbohydrates important for direct energy and endurance.
Dairy & Ice Cream
Features / Benefits
Dextrose is ideal to balance the sweetness in dairy and fermented desserts, and extends shelf life.
In frozen dairy, where a clean, mild sweetness is desired, dextrose is extremely useful in soft-scoopable ice cream, ice lollies, water ices and other frozen desserts. It ensures improved palatability and good melt-down characteristics. Its capacity to depress the freezing point helps to improve the scoopability of ice cream scoopable at – 18 °C. Texture and mouthfeel of ice lollies and sorbets are improved by inhibiting sucrose recrystallization with a small addition of dextrose.
In milk drinks (chocolate or other flavored), dextrose is widely used to control the overall sweetness in combination with other sugars. Moreover, dextrose is delivering quick energy.
Culinary
Features / Benefits
Dextrose is often used in variety of mixes including sauce mixes, as they require a dispersion aid, a bulking agent, a carrier or a sweetener.
In dressings, dextrose provides a pleasant, mild sweetness that enhances the delicate flavors, especially in tomato based sauces.
In pickled products, dextrose has a number of benefits over sucrose: As a starting additive, it accelerates lactic acid fermentation, and thanks to the high osmotic pressure it exerts, dextrose improves the consistency, flavor and preservation of many pickled vegetables.
Meat
Features / Benefits
For meat curing, dextrose is used in both injection and immersion curing-brines to enhance color formation and to facilitate salt entry into the tissue. Additionally, it helps to offset some of the “brashness” of the salt, to improve the overall flavor and to control the pH value.
In the fermentation of dry sausages, the use of carbohydrates is standard practice. In order to achieve optimum balance in the development of a defined micro-organism population during fermentation and a well-controlled pH, it is necessary to use a range of carbohydrates however. For easily metabolized finished sausage with good sensorial properties, body and flavor, carbohydrate blends including dextrose are required.
Some Cargill products are only approved for use in certain geographies, end uses, and/or at certain usage levels. It is the customer's responsibility to determine, for a particular geography, that (i) the Cargill product, its use and usage levels, (ii) the customer's product and its use, and (iii) any claims made about the customer's product, all comply with applicable laws and regulations.