How do they get the smooth, round chocolate coating on confectionery like Maltesers and Whoppers?
鈥� I spent six months making Smarties, a similar type of confectionery, in 1977. The chocolate centres were tumbled in a device resembling a cement mixer that gave them repeated coatings alternating between sweet starchy liquid and powdered sugar, blow-dried after each coat. It took a week or two to learn the knack of ensuring an even coating: we had to remove clumped material, get the right combination of wet and dry, and keep the layers thin. Trainees鈥� lumpy sweets were sold off cheap.
I handled about a tonne of chocolate centres a day, putting on the white inner coat. More experienced workers did the outer candy coating, in similar 鈥渃ement mixers鈥�, and the finished product was polished by tumbling the sweets in powdered beeswax, except for the black ones, for which petroleum jelly was used, apparently to avoid a whitish bloom.
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鈥淭he finished candy coating was polished by tumbling the sweets in powdered beeswax鈥�
Significantly, this was not a conveyor-belt manufacturing process. Each worker controlled their own rate, taking anything from an hour to an hour and a half per batch, depending on experience.
Peter Verney, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, UK