# How are strawberry laces made?

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## Summary

Strawberry laces are a chewy dough of glucose syrup, wheat flour and sugar, pushed through a die into long thin strands, cut to length and glazed.

## Description

Strawberry laces are long, thin strands of chewy, strawberry flavoured sweet, sold loose in pick and mix and in bags. They are made the same way as liquorice bootlaces, by extrusion, but without any liquorice.
Extrusion: the key step
Extrusion means forcing a soft, mixed food through a plate or die with openings cut to the shape you want. Blades then cut the extruded strands to length. It is used for pasta and breakfast cereals as well as sweets, and liquorice is one of the classic extruded sweets: see how is liquorice made?
Red liquorice, which contains no liquorice at all, is made from a starchy or gummy binder with sugar, extruded into ropes or tubes with a chewy texture, and flavoured with things like strawberry, cherry or raspberry. Strawberry laces are part of the same family.
How the laces are made
Mix. Glucose syrup, wheat flour, sugar and a little fat are mixed into a dough with fruit juice, acid, colour and flavouring.Cook. Like liquorice paste, the mixture is cooked before it is shaped.Extrude. The dough is forced through a die with small round openings, and comes out as long, thin strands.Cut. Blades cut the strands to length.Glaze. A thin glaze, often beeswax, stops the laces sticking together in the bag.
What is in a bag of laces
The food database Open Food Facts records the ingredients of several UK supermarket strawberry laces. Sainsbury's version, for example, lists glucose fructose syrup, wheat flour, sugar, dextrose, palm oil, citric acid, concentrated strawberry and blackcurrant juice, fruit and vegetable concentrates of apple, pumpkin, radish and tomato, a white beeswax glaze, flavouring and antioxidants. The Co op's laces are made in the Netherlands to a very similar recipe.
Fruit and vegetable concentrates like these are used as colouring foods, which colour sweets without synthetic dyes: see natural colours in sweets
Fizzy and sour laces
Sour laces can be coated in sour sanding, a mixture of sugar with citric, tartaric and malic acids that gives sweets a sour taste: see how are sour sweets made?
Allergens and diets
Because most strawberry laces are made with wheat flour, they contain gluten and are not suitable for people with coeliac disease unless the label says they are gluten free: see wheat in sweets. A beeswax glaze means they are not vegan: see what is beeswax on sweets?

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