Unwrapped 2.0 (2015) s01e06 Episode Script

Hi.
I'm Alfonso Ribeiro.
Welcome to "Unwrapped 2.
0.
" Sometimes, the appeal of our favorite snack is right on the surface.
A potato chip? Pretty much a potato chip.
But some of our favorite foods conceal a delicious secret.
Then, you take your first bite, and it's a surprising flavor explosion.
From a mouthwatering marshmallow middle to an unexpected blast of peppermint cream to the most iconic center of them all.
You can run, but you can't hide from a delicious secret center.
This is the Mallo Cup, and it's a piece of candy history.
First dreamed up in the 1940s by the Boyer brothers of Altoona, Pennsylvania, this creamy, chocolaty delight lays claim to the title of America's first cup candy, and it still tastes just the same as it did back then.
We stayed true to our recipe, and it hasn't changed a drop since the Boyer brothers first made it, and that's what makes it so good.
Every Mallo Cup starts with marshmallow filling.
It's mainly corn syrup, sugar, egg whites, and vanilla extract, but you'll notice I did say "mainly.
" There are a few secret ingredients that we can't tell you, but that's what makes the Mallo Cup the Mallo Cup.
One ingredient that's definitely not a secret is liquid sugar, and that's where the process of making the Mallo begins.
The sugar is boiled up in big tanks that reach temperatures of 230 degrees.
Once it's the right consistency, it's on to the next step.
They open the valve and will have a screen under there, and that makes sure we don't have any clumps in our product.
So they'll sift it out and then they'll weigh it to make sure the consistency and our texture is the exact formula we want.
When it's ready, the liquid sugar moves on to the leveling tank, where it joins up with the egg whites to help give it a fluffy, airy texture.
Then, it's on to the master mixer.
The master mixer then mixes for several more minutes while it cools it down, bringing it to the right consistency and velocity, depending on our conditions weather, humidity, and stuff like that.
The recipe is so sensitive, even a little rain outside can force a change in quantities.
Samples are taken throughout this process and weighed to be sure the mix is just right.
After it comes out of the large mixers, it's put in these large stainless-steel bins, about 64 pounds in each bin.
So that's 320 pounds, or, as I'd like to think of it, the size of an NFL lineman.
But before it can go into the Mallo Cups, it all has to set.
When it comes out, it's around 230 degrees, the marshmallow itself.
It sits in a cooling room for Once it's at the right temperature, each bin is dumped into a chute that sends the cooled marshmallow downstairs.
The kitchen is above the depositing area, and it goes gravity-fed depositor down into the depositing area, where the actual production starts.
That cooled marshmallow gets a bit of a rest downstairs because now it's all about chocolate lots and lots of chocolate.
Did I mention it's a lot of chocolate? We have three tanks that hold around 150,000 pounds of chocolate.
Forget chocolate bunnies.
That's enough chocolate to make a chocolate whale! After all that chocolate gets pumped into the melting tanks, it meets up with the Mallo Cup secret weapon.
It's a little surprise that people get.
When they bite into a Mallo Cup, they will taste coconut because we put coconut into the milk chocolate.
Shaved coconut is roasted here in these giant ovens to make sure it's perfectly toasty before going into the chocolate.
Once it's mixed, it's on to the tempering machine.
The chocolate tempering process is very hands-on and constantly needs to be monitored.
They have to monitor the texture, the consistency of the chocolate, to make sure that our chocolate comes out at the correct shine and the correct taste and everything.
And now, we're finally ready to put together some Mallo Cups.
As you can see, it's a pretty fancy contraption that handles that.
The machinery puts a paper cup into the mold.
A shot of chocolate is then deposited into the cup.
Two jets work every other row to make the filling process twice as fast.
Wait a minute.
What about the marshmallow? How does that get in the middle? Well, it's as easy as a quick puff of air.
The air, it forces the chocolate up to the sides of the cup.
And then, the 'mallow is then deposited into the cup.
Now, this is really cool.
The cups run over a vibrating plate which distributes the marshmallow evenly before it gets hit with a second shot of chocolate on top.
Another ride across a vibrating plate settles those tasty layers in place while the candy makers make sure no stray marshmallow is peeking out of that chocolate.
Then, each row of cups vanishes into the 35-foot-long cooling tub.
That's about as long as a city bus.
The candy actually takes about 20 minutes to get through before coming out.
And when it comes out, these Mallo Cups are ready to eat.
They get picked up and put on another conveyor belt, one by one, as many as 2-million cups in a day.
If you lay them end to end, they would span 58 miles.
The final step, of course, is the wrapper.
This line does everything from grouping the cups to sliding them onto trays to covering them in the classic retro wrappers.
But as any kid knows, there's one more thing to a Mallo Cup that makes them extra special.
On the bottom of all our candy is also our play money.
Collect enough play money, and you can cash it in for more Mallo Cups.
It's been in the candy since the inception of the Mallo Cup.
And that means the Mallo Cup has two secret centers.
But I have to admit, it's the sweet, creamy marshmallow that's my favorite.
When you bite into a Mallo Cup, you always know a fresh Mallo Cup because you get a little bit of marshmallow kind of drips down on your the bottom of your lip.
It melts in your mouth.
It just is a bit of heaven.
Mr.
Owl Coming up, we head right to the source to try to answer one of life's great mysteries.
A-One, A-two-hoo! If you wanna protect your head, you wear a helmet, right? So, what if you wanna protect your sweet, chewy center? How about a hard candy shell? Back in the 1930s, with the iconic Tootsie Roll a huge success, the Tootsie Roll company was, well, on a roll.
That's when they came up with the Tootsie Pop.
Tootsie Pops start off with a hard candy cooker, where we take corn syrup and sugar and cook it to about 298 degrees.
Once properly cooked, citric acid is used to add just the right amount of tangy flavor.
As the candy moves on to the cooling process, precise temperature control is key.
After we cook the product and add our color and flavor to it, we have to cool it down, and that cooling is kind of an art.
You actually try to cool it relatively quickly, and then heat it back up, and then cool it again.
And that all happens here, on these long, candy-covered, moving sidewalks called cooling conveyors.
On the cooling conveyor itself, it goes through a set of rollers and set of plows, and that is literally to move it and to spread it out to increase the surface area so you can cool it quicker.
Depends on how flat you need to make it, or whether you actually literally have to turn it upside down.
After all the rolling, flattening, and stretching, another conveyor carries this sweet candy river down to the batch roller.
That batch rolls back and forth and creates a Tootsie Pop rope.
And that's what's going on with the chocolate center, as well.
But what happens now to those candy ropes? Let me remind you This episode is all about secret centers.
In the Tootsie Pop processing, there's one part of this, the pop former, we're not gonna allow you to see.
Fair enough, but you can probably guess what the pop former does.
Yep, it forms the pops, sticks and all.
Candy rope and Tootsie rope go in the back, and Tootsie Pops come out the front.
Once the pop former does its magic, the fully formed pops are off to another conveyor to begin yet another cooling process.
At over 11 feet tall, this colossally cool spiral cooling tower can cool up to 11,000 pops at a time.
As the pops rotate around, they travel up the spiral to exit the top, completely chill and ready to wrap.
The wrapper takes individual pops by the stick and cuts a 5-inch wrapper and wraps it around the top of the Tootsie Pop, and then twists it.
And that is wax paper, so it maintains its shape and size.
The individual wrapping process is lightning fast.
In fact, these high-speed wrapping machines can wrap 600 pops a minute.
That's 36,000 an hour, which means, in a day Well, that's too much math for me.
Over 21-million Tootsie Pops are made every day.
If you laid all those Tootsie Pops end to end, they'd stretch from New York to Hawaii.
But all those pops aren't gonna bag themselves.
Last step for all the Tootsie Pop flavors is the bagger.
The mixed flavor pops come back in and go into a bagger, and the bagger packages the pops at about 85 bags per minute.
So, what about that question that has been plaguing us for decades? How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop? Let's ask the experts.
To this day, there's a battle between your tongue and your teeth.
Are you going to lick it, or are you going to bite it? Let's find out.
I, myself, never get there without biting.
Three.
The world may never know.
Coming up, what happens when a holiday treat is so good, people want it all year long? Every delicious treat needs to look good on the outside.
But sometimes, the tastiest part is hidden on the inside, and nothing is more surprising on the tongue than some refreshing and creamy mint.
Peppermint Cream Long Grove Confectionery in Illinois started making these dark chocolate delights as a Christmas treat.
It started in 1975 out of a little store in the town of Long Grove.
And over time, the business grew out of this small space and required manufacturing facilities.
And then we just, kind of, have grown from there.
Today, their Peppermint Cream candy is a year-round best seller, maybe because they still make it with the same care and attention as they did when the company started.
Just like back then, it all begins with a peppermint center made of just a few basic ingredients sugar, water, peppermint oil, and cream.
The unique part of the Peppermint Cream is really the simplicity of it.
But while the ingredients might be simple, the trick is in how you combine them.
Different sugars are combined with water and some other ingredients that then are mixed into a dough-like consistency.
Done right, you end up with soft, airy peppermint cream.
This kind of candy even has a fancy name fondant, which I think is French for, "Yes, give me some.
" Once the consistency is just right, it's time to turn that fondant into the little patties that will nestle in the secret center of the candy.
That dough is then put into a hopper on our enrober line, and each of the creams then are extruded onto the belt using a little wire cutter, and there's a little bunch of them all the way across.
You might be tempted to grab one now, but I say wait for it.
Why? One word Chocolate.
The chocolate, of course, is pretty special itself.
Primarily, all of our chocolate starts with South African cocoa beans.
The company orders every day.
It comes in 10-pound slabs that are then melted down and mixed to just the right temperature.
It's higher quality dark chocolate than what would usually be put on most mass-produced candies, so when you taste it, you really can taste the difference.
So you combine the bitter quality of the chocolate with the very sweet texture and taste of the fondant mint center, and that is what gives it its bite and its sensory taste experience when you bite into it.
Sounds good to me.
We've got the peppermint cream, and we've got the chocolate.
What do you say we get these two together? At that point, go through our waterfall of dark chocolate.
Wait.
Did she just say "waterfall of dark chocolate?" Oh, yes, she did.
It really is awesome inside a candy factory.
Yeah, baby.
The patties march down a line, dozens at a time.
In fact, Long Grove makes around If you were to stack up a week's worth, that stack would stand taller than 17 Empire State Buildings.
But you can't bite into these just yet.
There's still one final step.
After it goes through the chocolate waterfall, it goes onto the cooling belt.
The cooling belt not only cools the candies, it also blows the excess chocolate off and gives the patties that cool, wave-like texture.
It takes about 20 minutes for one piece to go all the way through the cooling.
Once it's cool, each piece is nestled by hand into trays and packed into cartons, ready to tantalize tongues across America.
I think one of the surprises is the unique quality of, if you're eating a peppermint, that's one flavor.
Then, if you're eating dark chocolate, that's another flavor.
When you combine the very thin piece of mint with the thin dark chocolate, it's a third quality once you bite into it and enjoy it, and it's a melt-in-your-mouth experience.
Coming up, what if you took a classic dinner dish and shrunk it down into bite-sized pieces, one with a surprisingly delicious center? You know, not every flavorful center has to be sweet.
Sometimes, the best ones are savory, and their deliciousness isn't concealed by chocolate or candy, but an oh-so-tasty pastry.
We've all heard of beef Wellington.
It's an old-school entrée often attributed to the first Duke of Wellington.
You know, the guy who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo? But at Kabobs in Atlanta, Georgia, they've managed to shrink the complicated dish down to a delicious bite-sized treat.
The mini beef Wellington is a perfect hors d'oeuvre because it's not something that people prepare at home.
And that's because making a perfect beef Wellington ain't easy, nor is making a miniature version of it.
First things first the beef.
If you added up all the beef we cut, it's about 384 head of cattle.
Holy cow, that's a lot of beef! And it's all hand cut into 7 to 9-gram pieces before it meets its marinade of salt, garlic powder, black pepper, and oil.
This our vacuum tumbling operation.
The hand-cut tenderloin is brought over here, added with a marinade, put into our vacuum tumbler, and tumbled under vacuum for 15 minutes.
Something that it would take overnight at home takes 15 minutes here.
Next door, and the next step, is the duxelles, which is a fancy word for a paste consisting of mushrooms, shallots, Madeira wine, and butter.
And in this case, lots and lots of each.
We use approximately 60 to 80 pounds of butter a month and 20,000 to 30,000 pounds of mushrooms, and about 300 to 400 gallons of Madeira wine a year.
How much wine is that? Well, imagine your town's water tower filled with wine instead of water.
On second thought, don't.
But there's one more thing that goes into these mini masterpieces.
We like to put a little bit of heavy cream in there.
And typically, classically, you don't find that in a duxelles.
But we found that it adds a rich, creamy, buttery flavor to it that you just can't get in a small hors d'oeuvre.
After it's mixed and cooled, it's finally time for these yummy ingredients to be put together by hand lots and lots and lots of hands.
The most important component about our mini beef Wellington are the people that actually put it together.
They take a lot of pride in what they do.
Production workers take a piece of marinated tenderloin, put it in a 3"x3" puff pastry, scoop a bit of that duxelles, and then fold it into a decorative pastry.
Let's see that again in slow-mo because these ladies are fast.
Once they're formed, it's time to get cool very cool.
This is nothing like your freezer at home.
This baby is set at minus-30 degrees.
That's around the record low for Fargo, North Dakota.
Whew! And I'd like to throw in a special thanks to our cameraman for shooting in here.
These frozen pastries get delivered all over the country, just waiting to jump into a nice, hot oven.
When you bake it, the pastry flakes, and you get the moistness of the meat and the duxelles mixed together, and it turns into a rich, buttery flavor.
Delicious.
You can come out from there.
Huh? Oh, there's a gentleman hiding behind the candy.
The disrespect is unbelievable.
Hey, sonny boy.
No, it's not torture.
Ugh.
It's just your media we're using.