Unwrapped 2.0 (2015) s01e01 Episode Script

Southern Treats

Hi.
I'm Alfonso Ribeiro, and this is "Unwrapped 2.
0.
" From sweet tea to sweet potato pie, no one does sweets like the South, so let's pack an extra toothbrush and head to the land of Dixie for a Southern-fried look at how some of our favorite Southern sweet treats are made.
Whether it's ooey-gooey marshmallow, spicy/sweet peppermint, or a fried pastry so sweet it's inspired grandmothers everywhere, this is one sweet ride you won't want to miss.
Way back in the 1900s, Howell Campbell of the Standard Candy Company came up with a bar that combined four different ingredients chocolate, peanuts, caramel, and marshmallow in one piece of candy.
Problem was he had no idea what to call it.
Howell Campbell was riding a streetcar, and there was a teacher on the streetcar with him, and she had a baby with her, and she had this idea to say, "Hey, it could be called a Goo Goo.
It's so good it will be asked for from birth.
" The Goo Goo Cluster was born.
And though the process of making Goo Goo Clusters has certainly evolved, the product itself is almost exactly as it was The making of the Goo Goo Cluster begins, appropriately enough, with the fusion of two sugary ingredients caramel and marshmallow.
It goes through a drum line that spins it down onto a conveyer line, and then that moves another about 10 feet before it hits a caramel roller that rolls a caramel onto the top of the nougat line, so they're both stacked on top of each other.
It's like a long moving sidewalk of caramel and marshmallow-y goodness.
But how does that turn into Goo Goo Clusters? As it moves down the line, the fused caramel and marshmallow go into the first of several cooling tunnels.
And as they come out of that cooling tunnel, there is what's called a slitter spreader.
So, it takes this wide sheet of caramel and marshmallow nougat and splits it into several rows.
And then it's onto to the guillotine.
My favorite part of the production process is probably when the caramel and the nougat are coming out of the slitter spreader and they enter into the guillotine.
It sounds, you know, masochistic, but it's pretty cool that you see it go from this big sheet to all these individual pieces that turn into a candy bar.
Well, not quite yet.
A big part of the Goo Goo Cluster is, after all, chocolate.
In fact, go into making them every day.
That's the average weight of an adult African elephant.
At that point, we go through what I've affectionately termed "amen corner.
" Once they turn the corner, the marshmallow/caramel squares get their first taste of chocolate.
But just a taste.
Just enough, in fact, to prepare for what comes next.
From there, it goes through a shower of peanuts that fall down from above and shower it all across all the squares.
And that coating chocolate allows the nuts, then, to stick to the product.
If we just put the cores and the nuts fell onto the caramel, they would bounce off.
But because of that coating chocolate, that gives the nuts something to grab onto.
And they're gonna need to hold on for dear life as they travel headlong into a curtain of pure chocolate.
How can't you love a chocolate bath? And the smell that's coming from that machine as it passes through is pretty awesome.
After they cool for a bit, it's off to packaging.
Each Goo Goo Cluster is individually wrapped, so the first thing they have to do is get lined up properly so when they hit the wrappers, they're in the proper position.
As the unarranged clusters travel on a conveyer, a series of gates controlled by electric eyes drop down to force them into neat, orderly rows.
It is first lined up on the conveyers and then dropped into a lower conveyer, then shoots it into, essentially, one after another into rows.
And those rows of fresh Goo Goo Clusters are headed for the wrapping machine.
The wrapping machine has a roller at the top with a large roll of film on it, and that goes through a series of rollers down to where the product is.
It is then wrapped around the product on the bottom and sealed, and then we do have, essentially, a wrapped Goo Goo Cluster moving right off that back line.
Every production day, between 300,000 and 400,000 Goo Goo Clusters tumble off the line.
By the time they're ready for shipping, they've traveled three football fields from start to finish, but they will, of course, travel a lot further than that.
Goo Goo Cluster is thought of as a Southeastern brand, but it's a bit of a misnomer.
We're actually distributed coast to coast.
You can find us anywhere in the United States.
Which means no matter where you live, you're never too far from the candy so good we ask for it at birth.
Coming up when is a candy also a medicine? And later, wine you can serve to kids? Hey! They give your mouth that minty kick after a spicy Southern meal.
As a kid, you probably tried to slip a few of them into your pockets on the way out of the diner, and if that diner was in the South, there's a good chance those peppermints had a unique puffy softness that melts right in your mouth.
It's no coincidence peppermints are offered after dinner.
The peppermint plant is one of the world's oldest ways to soothe your stomach after a big meal, and Red Bird Peppermint Puffs have been a Southern after-dinner tradition for over a century.
And they've been made much the same way and with the same recipe since the beginning, with some high-tech updates, of course.
The minty magic begins here at Piedmont Candy Company in Lexington, North Carolina.
The candy-making process starts, as you might guess, with sugar.
Lots of it We start with 100% cane sugar, and we heat that up.
Heating occurs in two stages.
First, the sugar is mixed with water and is preheated with steam to 200 degrees.
Then it goes into the second cooker, and it final-cooks it to 310, and once it reaches 310, it comes out on our cooling drum.
As the sugar begins to caramelize, it turns yellow, and the cooling drum turns the liquid sugar into a thick, gooey jelly, up and transferred to a buggy.
At this point, the translucent blob of sugary jelly looks nothing like peppermint candy.
But that's about to change.
And it starts with the stripe makers.
The most intriguing part as people see the way we make the product is how the stripe is made.
They pull the 100-pound batches off, and with each batch, they actually pull a little piece off that's gonna become the red stripes.
That little five-pound piece that they pulled off, they're actually hand-kneading the color into it, which I think is really cool.
While the stripe maker kneads the red coloring into the mixture, the other 95 pounds of the vat goes onto a sugar spinner.
As the sugar continues to cool on the pulling machine, it turns back to white, and that's not all.
The purpose of the pulling machine is threefold.
It helps cool it down, it helps put air in it to airify the mint to give it a puffy taste, and it also helps blend the peppermint flavor throughout the batch.
The peppermint is all-natural and super concentrated.
Just three ounces flavors the entire 100-pound batch.
That's only about two shots worth.
And even though everyone assumes that it's the red stripe that gives the candy its peppermint flavor, it's actually the opposite.
The red stripe has no peppermint flavor at all.
But how do those red stripes get on the candy? This is where probably the most interesting part of the whole operation is, is how we adhere the stripes to the batch.
After about five minutes on the spinner, the now white and peppermint-flavored candy mixture is transferred to a table, where a candymaker molds it by hand into a big, puffy, That's why when you look at the candy and when you open up a full bag of candy, you're not gonna see every piece looking identical.
It's not symmetrical every time, and that's because they're putting those pieces on by hand.
At this point, it does kind of look like a giant piece of peppermint candy, but how does this become this? That's the job of the batch roller.
The rough surface of the batch roller grabs the candy, keeps it moving, and keeps the stripes straight as it reduces the puffy, gooey pillow of peppermint into a slender tube.
Originally, they were rolled out by hand on big tables, so that's why Peppermint Puffs are round.
The candymakers continuously stab the roll with a metal pick to prevent air bubbles from forming in the candy.
Once the sizer has the rope down to one inch in diameter, it enters the cutter.
These cutters are custom-made to the shape that we've always had, and that's the shape that we're known for.
And that's just what they're starting to look like now.
But these little guys still have a long journey ahead of them.
From the cutter, they go into the cooling conveyers, where they're rapidly air-cooled to keep their shape.
Then onto a belt where they travel up to the inspectors, who remove any broken or misshapen pieces.
At this point, the candy has been completely cooled and is actually quite hard.
But wait a minute.
Red Bird Peppermint Puffs are famous for being soft, not hard.
How's that happen? Well, that's a secret, but it happens at the end of this line in what's called the curing room.
In here, it undergoes a proprietary process that adds some humidity and some heat back into the hard candy, giving it the familiar puffy look and texture.
The mint goes in hard and comes out soft on the other side.
So, about two hours after starting out as a sugary liquid, these little guys are ready for the final phase of their journey the wrapper.
They're called horizontal wrappers, or pillow wrappers.
As the mint goes through the infeed, the film wraps around it and forms sort of a pillow.
It seals the bottom, and then it seals the ends in the shape of a little pillow.
The entire process from sugar to shipping container takes a little over two hours.
Our daily output is around 60,000 pounds per day, which is a little less than That's over enough to stretch from New York to Washington, D.
C.
Coming up a Southern treat so sweet it's made its way into the vocabulary of grandmothers everywhere.
You may recognize it as the name your grandma calls you as she pinches your cheek, but this tasty treat gets its name from a super-sweet ingredient honey.
You guessed it.
We're talking about the Honey Bun.
Carolina Foods in Charlotte, North Carolina, has been making these honey-filled fried sweet rolls for over 60 years.
My grandfather founded Carolina Foods in 1934.
He was running it from his basement.
But what exactly is a Honey Bun? Honey Bun is a fried sweet roll that is actually made with real honey, fried, and then glazed.
Sounds yummy, right? We'll get to the waterfall of warm glaze later.
But for now, we need to start from the beginning.
The making of the Honey Bun starts with a top-secret formulation called the Honey Bun concentrate.
It actually has real honey in it, and we, you know, have our own secret formula, which is a mix that we blend and contains unique spices and other ingredients.
And then we add sugar, flour, shortening, water and put that in the mixer, and we mix it up.
Next, the dough is flattened, dusted with cinnamon, and then rolled into that iconic Honey Bun shape.
After the cinnamon is applied to the dough, it goes to a torpedo roller.
That torpedo roller takes the dough, turns it on its side, and rolls it up into a long We call it a snake.
And it then is fed into our guillotine process, where it's cut into individual pieces of bun.
These future Honey Buns are now on their way to take a dip in a very hot oil bath.
And this is the cool part As they float along the frying tub, an ingenious contraption flips them to ensure the perfect browned bun.
They're looking more like Honey Buns now, but there's still one more delicious step.
After they're fried, the Honey Buns turn the corner on the conveyer belt and prepare for the steepest slope of their day.
But trust me It's worth the climb.
They go under this big waterfall of glaze and get coated in clear, hot, yummy glaze.
After the glaze is applied, it goes through several conveyers to our cooling tower.
It's on the cooling tower for around 30 minutes to cool the buns down so we can actually wrap them at a certain temperature.
Looking at this huge tower is every sweet tooth's dream.
It's basically thousands of fresh, hot, sweet pastries slowly spiraling 'round and 'round.
We can make and if you do the math, it turns out that if you lie the Honey Buns end to end, they will reach around So, that's a lot of Honey Buns.
That only leaves us with one last question.
How did the snack get its clever name? So, yes, the name Honey Bun comes from the fact that it's a sweet roll, but it has honey in it, so, you know, it's a bun with honey in it.
That's where the name comes from.
Ah, Honey Bun.
Not only is this sweet to hear from your grandma, it's even sweeter to eat.
Coming up a Southern wine that's a favorite of all ages, even kids.
Hey! Southern sweets come in all kinds of packages, including beverages, and you can't talk about Southern soda without talking about this delicious cherry-flavored concoction that's been a Southern delicacy for almost a century.
Since the early 1900s, Carolina Beverage Corporation has been making this delicious cherry-flavored soda, but it started even before that.
L.
D.
Peeler started in the soft-drink business in 1913, but then when World War I started, there was a sugar shortage, and he wasn't able to get his sugar and other ingredients, so they started experimenting with other flavors and blends of different ingredients, and they came up with the formula for Cheerwine in 1917.
That secret formula is made in concentrated form here at Cheerwine HQ in Salisbury, North Carolina.
Then that concentrate is shipped to bottlers all over the country.
Once we receive the concentrate out of Salisbury, we then convert the concentrate into syrup.
And we do that by combining it with water and sweetener.
But it's not Cheerwine yet.
That happens here.
So once it's mixed, we take the blended syrup, and we transfer it to a bulk tank that's several thousand gallons, and from that point, we push it to the mix processor, where we take the blended syrup and mix it with treated water.
And the treated water is cooled, and as it's being cooled, we also are injecting carbon dioxide into the product, too.
That's where you get the bubbles.
Next, the bubbly Cheerwine is bottled.
Once that pressure in the bottle becomes equal to the pressure in the bowl, it opens the valve, and the product just simply drops through gravity into the bottle.
That shuts off the CO2, and the filling stops at that point.
And it all happens so fast that they're filling That's enough to fill two backyard pools a day.
Once those bottles are filled with Cheerwine, the final step is to label and ship them and soon not just to the South.
We hope to to be able to be a national brand and everybody to be able to experience the joy of Cheerwine.
But no matter how big they get, the making of Cheerwine remains a family affair.
My children are in the business, so they're the fifth generation, and hopefully they can continue to carry on the good cheer.
Puffy softneh that's bethda dinna mouth? Real, real bad.
We're talking aboutthe Honey Bun.
Boo-yeah! Okay.
Fun police.

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