Unwrapped 2.0 (2015) s02e07 Episode Script

On this episode of "Unwrapped 2.
0," we're goin' old school.
From colorful wafers you just can't resist to irresistible bits of chocolaty nougat to cakes with a clever crinkle, you'll fall in love all over again with these classic confections.
When I get my hands on these colorful candies, it's like unwrapping a little gift.
They've been giving people that same feeling for over 100 years.
Necco Wafers first began in 1847 with Oliver Chase churning out the candy by hand in his small candy shop.
His wafers quickly caught on and soon found themselves being enjoyed around the world.
Necco Wafers have been eaten as far as the Arctic by Eskimos.
Eventually, Chase merged with two other candy companies and formed the New England Confectionary Company, also known as Necco.
The famous Necco Wafers start here in these enormous vats.
Vegetable gums and gelatin are added together to create a slurry.
We then take sugar from our silo and move it into the mixer.
After the sugar comes the color and flavoring that make these wafers so special.
Each individual flavor is made in separate batches.
Cinnamon, orange, lemon, lime, clove, wintergreen, licorice, and chocolate.
Whoo, that's a mouthful of flavors.
When it's finished, each colorful dough ball weighs in at about 1,000 pounds.
Dough is put into bins and wheeled over to an extruder.
They cut the dough in pieces and manually lift them to the top of the machine.
The extruder takes the dough and slowly but surely flattens the product into one long 1/8-inch-thin ribbon of candy.
Kind of like a Play-Doh kit, really.
Now with the perfect thickness, the wafer sheets make their way to the most vital part of this operation.
In the blink of an eye, a stamping machine punches the logo over and over and over again on the long sheets of dough.
At the same time, it pushes the dough down onto a cutter that forms that perfect wafer shape.
The cutter actually is timed to cut around the Necco Wafer logo.
And it all happens in a hurry.
Nearly 35,000 Necco Wafers run through these cutters each minute.
Once they're cut, the wafers head off to a vertical dryer.
Spanning 780 feet, this machine has 13 conveyor belts inside to move candy slowly through the machine.
We can't heat the sugar too much because it'll melt.
That means the wafers need to ride these belts for about an hour at 140 degrees.
Once they come out the other side, they're dropped onto metal trays, where they sit overnight.
They're left in a humidity-controlled room to finish drying.
The next morning, the metal trays filled with the now crispy wafers are hand-fed into a sorting bin.
It's here that nearly travel down a tube and mix together, creating a rainbow of assorted flavors.
As the random assortment of wafers flow out of the bin, they're stacked together by hand like casino chips.
The colorful candies are then on the move to packaging, and at Necco, even the wrappers are old school.
The glassine paper dates back into the 1800s.
It was probably a more common wrapping material then than it is today, but we continue to use it.
It's such an iconic piece of candy.
With their famous wrapping covering the wafers, the candy rolls away from the machine and into boxes, ready for delivery.
When you bite it, it's got this nice snap, and then it dissolves in your mouth.
It just covers your whole mouth with flavor.
Coming up, learn how these iconic nougat bars danced into the hearts of millions.
And later, discover why these classic corn chips have their wavy appearance.
Hey! I can remember coming home after a night of trick-or-treating and sharing some of my candy with my dad, except when it came to this nougat-filled chocolate bar.
The Charleston Chew candy bar goes all the way back to the roaring '20s and a popular dance known as the Charleston.
The candy borrowed the name of a dance, but while not that many people are cutting a rug to the Charleston anymore, this chocolaty treat has never gone out of style.
And just like it did almost a century ago, the process always starts the same way the chewy nougat center.
To create the nougat center, they mix egg whites, corn syrup, and water in these gigantic vats.
The ingredients get mixed together, and then the concoction sits in a holding tank at a frosty 40 degrees.
Then a combination of liquid sugar and corn syrup is heated to 180 degrees, creating a slurry mix.
That slurry mix and egg white solution are then pumped together into a cooker vessel.
Cooking vessel will cook up the solution to 250 degrees.
That'll take about 6 minutes.
After the mix is heated, it travels down from the cooking vessel into a press whip.
We can't see it, but inside this press whip, the ingredients are whipped together until the nougat reaches that perfect creamy texture.
It's here that one of the three scrumptious flavors, vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry, is added to the velvety nougat.
It gets dribbled into the top, and it gets mixed around for about 2 minutes so it's fully integrated into the nougat.
With the flavor added in, the nougat flows down out of the hopper, which is directly above a steel band.
It's called a ConSlab.
When the nougat hits the belt, it's, like, 210 degrees.
That is scorching.
When the red-hot nougat hits the belt, it starts cooling down right away.
That's because the steel belt is set at a chilly 44 degrees.
From there, the cooldown continues as the nougat travels through a tunnel set at 65 degrees for 6 minutes.
When it emerges, it's conveyed through a set of rollers that flatten it to a height of 1/2 inch.
The nougat is at the right height, but it's not exactly in bite-sized pieces just yet.
First, a series of metal disks slice through the nougat so their width measures Once the product gets split, the bars themselves are separated a little bit.
There are 30 rows of Charleston Chew bars on that line.
Then the long strands of nougat pass under a guillotine, which cuts the nougat into bars.
A Charleston Chew bar is close to 1 foot long.
Now cut to the proper dimensions, the nougat bars continue on the conveyor belt towards the enrobing area.
This is where the nougat gets its chocolate coating.
Heated up to 104 degrees, the chocolate's drizzled over the nougat bars, drowning them in creamy goodness.
Dressed in chocolate, the bars are now ready for their big moment.
A series of blowers blast the outer coating, creating that signature Charleston Chew ripple.
Now that they have the classic Charleston Chew appearance, the bars are off to the cooling line so the chocolate sets.
The temperate is dropped quickly and then brought back up close to room temperature so we don't have any moisture on the product.
That's to insure both the taste and appearance of the bars won't be affected by moisture.
The bars are whisked out of the cooling tunnel and off to the flow wrap.
Flow wrappers are just what they sound like.
The product comes into the wrapping area, and the wrapping material flows over and around the product.
So we produce 65 miles of Charleston Chews a day, laid end to end.
The wrapped bars are packed into boxes, ready for shipment, so that when someone grabs a bar off the grocery store shelf, they'll get to bite into a chewy, chocolaty, sweet treat that stood the test of time.
Coming up, we discover how these cakes got their crinkle.
Hey! This sweet treat combines classic flavors with what may be the best invention cake that you can take with you.
Over 100 years ago, Tastykake Baking Company created a uniquely shaped treat called Krimpets.
It was originally a rectangular-shaped cake.
It was so moist, it would come apart.
So one of the bakers actually here in the bakery at the time said, "Hey, why don't you crimp it?" The name stuck, and their Butterscotch Krimpet was born.
Making these delectable treats isn't a cakewalk.
They start off just like you'd make batter at home, by blending the ingredients in a mixer, except here, the ingredients get to the bowl in a wild way.
The baker is able to call them, actually, from the ceiling.
They blow through pipes in the ceiling into the mixing bowl.
But before the mixing starts, they also add in a few ingredients the conventional way by hand.
Starch, leavening, and spices churn together with eggs, milk, butter, sugar, and flour for about 2 minutes.
Water is added to the mix, and then it's pumped into a large holding tank until it's time to bake.
One batch of batter is close to 1,000 pounds.
With two batches per tank, that means each one can hold 1 ton of cake batter.
Now that the batter is prepped, they need to get their pans ready for baking.
Just like you would at home, we have to spray our pans with a nonstick spray to get the cakes to release from the pan.
But these are no ordinary pans.
They were custom made to create that unique Krimpet shape.
After the pans are misted with the nonstick spray, they move on to the batter depositor.
The batter depositor deposits less than an ounce of batter per cup in the baking pan.
Those nozzles are hard at work, creating the perfect individual-sized cakes.
Once the pans have had their fill, it's on to the oven.
But this isn't the kind of oven you would find in your kitchen.
Inside here, the pans travel through a serpentine style or an "S" shape.
The batter travels through different zones and temperatures ranging anywhere from 200 to 500 degrees.
That helps us achieve the correct color and texture so, when you bite into a Krimpet, it's got that unique spongy kind of texture.
The whole trip takes about 10 minutes, which is pretty fast, actually, given how far they're traveling.
If you were to stretch out this oven, it would cover over 150 feet.
That's like half a football field, and they still have a ways to go.
But first, they got to get 'em out of those pans.
The depanning process is to blow air on the cakes to help them release from the pan.
At the bottom of the oven, they knock lightly on the pans, and the Krimpets fall onto a cooling belt.
As the Krimpet cakes cool, let's check in on the making of the icing.
Sorry, you guys can't see that today.
It is top secret.
Okay, Shelly, we might not get to find out the special ingredients that go into the icing.
But we know one thing you're not skimping.
They go through about 1,200 pounds of it every hour.
First, the icing is flattened into sheets by giant rollers.
Then sheets are carefully placed on top of the rows of Krimpet cakes.
The icing actually goes on in one continuous ribbon.
Which means, of course, it needs to be cut.
But they don't use your typical cake knife.
They use what's called an air knife, which isn't really a knife at all.
It's pressurized air that's blown into the icing in intervals.
The force creates a knife-like cut, and voilà, the Krimpets have a classic, homemade appearance.
In pairs, the cakes travel down the table to get wrapped, sealed, and boxed up to be enjoyed by Krimpet fans around the country.
Over 160 million individual Butterscotch Krimpets are baked each year.
Each and every one is just as fun to eat as the last.
That's why you get two in every pack.
You actually have to break it apart to separate the icing, which is actually one of the really fun parts for a lot of people.
I can vouch for that.
Coming up, we find out how these crispy corn chips got their crazy shape.
Hey! Over the years, my taste buds have changed, but that's not the case when it comes to these salty snacks.
I loved them then, and I love them now, especially these little wavy dippers with a name I just love to say.
Whether you like 'em, munch 'em or dip 'em, Wise Dipsy Doodles is an old-school original when it comes to corn chips.
The Dipsy Doodles is the original wavy corn chip.
Corn chips were very popular back in the '60s, so Wise was looking for a way to put their spin on it.
That unique spin came when the company shaped their corn chips into waves to provide strength for dipping.
Now, decades later, these wavy wonders come in not just original but mouth-watering barbecue.
It's really that smoky, mesquite flavor of our barbecue that is a stand-out on our Dipsy Doodle corn chip.
To create these crunchy corn chips, it starts with what else? Corn.
Outside the walls of the factory sit massive silos, each holding up to 55,000 pounds of corn.
When it's time to start production, they convey the corn from the silo and transfer it into tanks.
Those niblets of corn aren't the only ingredients that make their way into these tanks.
Ready and waiting for the corn to arrive is a mixture of water and lime.
We're not talking about a green fruit.
Instead, it's an alkaline mineral that, when mixed with water, performs a very specific task.
The lime will soften the shells of the corn, the outside skin.
If we didn't remove the shells or the skin off of that corn, it would actually end up clumping together as we try to form the product.
The corn, water, and lime cook together inside these large vats for precisely 23 minutes.
When time is up, the watery mix is piped into holding tanks.
This is a crucial step to making Dipsy Doodles.
The mixture sits in these tanks for 8 hours to allow the outside shells to get nice and soft.
If you tried to do it any less, you would end up leaving some shells on that corn.
Now that all the prep work is done, it's time to make the dough that will become Dipsy Doodles.
Once the shells are soft, the mixture is pumped into a drum which knocks the softened shells off and gives the corn a quick rinse before they're dipsy doodled onto an incline conveyor.
Up, up, and away they go towards this metallic beast.
Inside of here, the corn niblets are dropped into a stone grinder.
The corn is forced into the middle of the stone in the center and then moved to the outside as the corn grinds.
There are actually stones that, one stays stationary, it's a round stone, and the other one spins.
It mashes together, and what we get on the other end is a doughy mixture called masa.
The masa dough heads over to the heart of the operation the extruder.
Inside this machine, there are dies that cut the masa dough into that perfect wavy Dipsy Doodle shape.
One to 11/2 inches is the optimum length of the Dipsy Doodle.
The Dipsy Doodle-shaped dough pops out into a 390-degree boiling vat of oil.
They'll cook in the oil for only a minute or two until they reach that crunchy perfection.
As the waves of chips pop out of the fryer, the excess oil falls off through the grates.
The fried Dipsy Doodles then head up a conveyor belt and drop into a rotating drum.
As they spin around, salt is dispensed in the center of the drum onto the chips.
The salt is applied by an auger that pushes the salt down a tube with holes in it.
You'll adjust the speed on that auger to hit the optimum amount of salt level depending on how much product you're putting through.
Now they're ready to head off to packaging unless, of course, you're a Dipsy Doodle destined to be barbecue flavored.
In that case, you've got one last pit stop.
In these rotating tumblers, that is where we will apply the spice or barbecue seasoning.
After they're bathed in barbecue seasoning, the Dipsy Doodles fall into a scaling machine that weighs out perfect portions to be bagged.
Wise produces 3 million pounds of Dipsy Doodles annually.
That averages out to be And whether you're enjoying original or barbecue, one thing's for sure they're just as much fun to eat as it is to say the name.
Dipsy Doodles are a perfect snack because they're crunchy and they're salty and, frankly, there isn't a bad time for snacking on Dipsy Doodles.
Old school.
You didn't realize my, uh, my new dance quote.
Uh! Where are you putting that nougat filling? - Hey.
- Come on, dip.