Video Transcript
What’s your favorite Halloween candy? If you said Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, M&M’s, Hershey’s Kisses, or Snickers, you’re not alone. These are some of the most popular Halloween candies in the United States, according to CandyStore.com. Chocolate is a Halloween candy staple, and we followed the candy-making process from bean to sweet treat to tell you how it gets into your trick-or-treat pail.
While it takes less than a second to pop it in your mouth, there’s nothing simple about the chocolate production process.
It all starts with the humble cocoa bean — more technically a seed — that grows on cacao trees in hot, wet climates like those in West Africa or the upper Amazon basin. In fact, just two countries, Ghana and the Ivory Coast, are credited with producing about half of the world’s cocoa.
According to the International Cocoa Organization, when the pods are ripe, they are cut from the trees and cracked open with wooden clubs, machetes, or, in some cases, machines, at which point the wet beans inside are extracted.
Next, the beans are boxed or piled under banana leaves in order to facilitate fermentation — a process where yeasts and bacteria grow around the seed pulp. This process takes up to five days and provides the chemical reactions that ultimately lead to the desired flavor. Once this process is complete and the cocoa beans have been dried, they make their way to the chocolate factory for production.
Here, the coffee beans are roasted at high temps — a process that is said to not only decontaminate the beans but also add aroma and flavor. They are then hulled with the use of a winnower, and the nibs are extracted.
Next, the beans are ground to achieve uniform particle sizes. The resulting product, called cocoa liquor, is then pressed into cocoa butter, often with the use of a horizontal hydraulic press. At this point, ingredients like sugar and milk might be added.
The next step is called conching, and this is where the material is mixed with an agitator and treated with heat in order to produce the liquid chocolate that’s become a little more uniform and familiar. It’s also the state where volatile acids evaporate, and color and moisture content reach desirable levels.
Finally, the liquid is tempered into a stable and consistent final product, then molded, filled or coated, and then cooled.
But we’re not done yet! Depending on your final product, chocolate bar wrapping machines can jacket these delightful goodies in seconds, with modern machines programmable to enable multiple sizes and shapes; perfect for seasonal packaging like Halloween. Bagging machines with built-in digital scales can apply on-the-nose weight accuracies before this high-demand treats board temperature-controlled carriers to maintain quality all the way to the point of sale.
Now that you know the manufacturing process behind a Halloween staple, it’s sure to taste even sweeter this year.
