Unwrapped 2.0 (2015) s02e11 Episode Script

We're about to get into a sticky situation on this episode of "Unwrapped 2.
0.
" Whether it's a frozen, colorful summer treat, a classic caramel sucker, or an ice-cream pop you can eat on the go, if it comes on a stick, you know it's delicious.
There's probably no more iconic treat on a stick than a popsicle.
But there's a lot more to making these frozen treats than you might think.
The colorful and flavor-filled Pace bar's history can be traced back to the '50s, when Ralph Pace's grandfather started making his own ice-cream pops.
Fast-forward to 1991, when Ralph took over the family business and brought it to the next level.
I had the opportunity to take the popsicles, expand them into grocery stores.
And we're up to about five million bars now a year.
They might be selling millions of popsicles today, but the process hasn't changed over the years.
We still make the popsicles like they did in the 1940s and 1950s.
It isn't broke, so we don't want to fix it.
It's a two-day process to make Pace's pops, and it definitely requires the early bird.
The process starts at 5:00 in the morning with our base punch.
The punch consists of hot water, citric acid, vegetable gums, and a ton of sugar or a half a ton, to be exact.
I add each 50-pound bag one by one to make about Once combined, the ingredients mix together in a 650-gallon tank for the next 24 hours.
A small fan blade at the bottom of the tank spins all night long, which not only circulates the ingredients, but helps keep the punch cool.
We cool it overnight to maintain the optimal temperature for putting it in the freezing tanks the next morning.
fast-forward to Day 2.
At 5:00 A.
M.
, the punch is ready to be punched up a notch with some flavor.
Today's menu calls for Pace bar's original flavors cherry, lime, peach, and grape.
And they're all made in-house.
We wanted to maintain our consistency in our flavors, and so we ended up making our own flavoring from scratch.
Once the flavors are made, each one is individually added to its own Then the punch is pumped in.
Once filled and mixed, the flavored punch is then pumped into the piston fillers, which fill these stainless-steel molds one flavor at a time.
What's a piston filler, you may ask? It's just kind of like a piston in your car.
As the piston goes in reverse, it draws punch up, and it pushes it forward out the front to fill up our molds.
Once all 24 popsicle slots in the mold are filled, it's ready for an icy-cold dip like you've never experienced into the brine tank.
These brine tanks that I made have calcium chloride in it, and that calcium chloride, if it has the right concentration, can go to negative-60 degrees without freezing.
As the molds sit in the 60-below brine, the flavored punch slowly starts to freeze from the outside in.
It takes them about 15 minutes to freeze all the way through, but they're not quite solid yet.
A lot of times, there'll be a single almost like a snowflake, sitting there floating in the middle of the bar.
Look carefully, because this freezing technique is what gives Pace bars their unique flavor and texture.
Our popsicles have been called shaved ice on a stick, 'cause the texture of it is softer.
People like to chew it.
Speaking of shaved ice on a stick, what about the stick? Cue the stick-stacker machine.
We place the popsicle sticks on top of this machine, and it organizes them all for us.
Then the stick holders not to be confused with the stick stacker gets loaded with the wooden handles.
It's two stainless-steel plates that grips 24 sticks at a time.
Fully loaded, the stick holder is ready for a bull's-eye It puts our sticks right dead center in our popsicle molds.
Now that the sticks are in place, the popsicles will chill out in these freeze tanks for a few more minutes, giving the wooden handles a chance to set up.
Between our five workers, we are pulling these molds thousands of times a day.
Which all adds up to about 40,000 popsicles a day, all by hand.
From the freeze tank, the molds are quickly transferred to the hot water extractor.
Just a few seconds in the hot water, and the popsicles free themselves from the mold.
Then those perfectly frozen popsicles are transferred to a holding tray, and a quick release of the stick holder sets them free.
From there, they're placed on to a conveyor belt and head off to the wrapping machine.
Each popsicle is individually wrapped in cellophane, then placed by hand into bags.
We developed our own bagger that blows open the bags.
And they put them in two at a time.
Once the bag is filled with a dozen popsicles three of each flavor they head down the line to the twist-tie.
Every day, we're making about 6,800 pounds of popsicles, which is pretty cool, no pun intended.
And whatever flavor you choose, brace yourself for an oh-so-sweet treat.
Oh, and "pace" yourself to avoid brain freeze.
Coming up, how do they get the banana-flavored swirl inside the iconic Slap Stix? And later, what does the temperature on Mars have to do with an ice-cream sundae? Hey! It's a nearly swirling with color and flavor, a stick sweet treat on a stick that's utterly delicious.
But why do they call them Slap Stix? A Slap Stix is a caramel pop with an inside of nougat swirl that's pink, yellow, and white, and flavored banana.
The Slap Stix lollipop has been a favorite since 1920, when it was invented by the Stark Candy Company.
Necco bought the Stark brand in 1990, and the pop's popularity shows no sign of slowing down.
Given its great taste, the longevity of Slap Stix is no secret, but the origin of the name is.
We think it might have something to do with the circus and clowns playing around with the lollipops, or the caramel pops, and slapping each other with them.
Necco makes and each one starts the same way.
A Slap Stix is made in two parts, initially.
First we have to cook the nougat.
The main ingredients in their nougat are sugar, corn syrup, and soy protein, which acts as a whipping agent to keep it light and fluffy.
The mixture is blended in a heated copper kettle for about 20 minutes at 280 degrees until it is just the right consistency.
Then they move the nougat to a high-speed blender where the coloring and banana flavor are added.
The marshmallow-like mixture then blends for an additional 10 minutes.
So we'll do that three times one for each color.
White, pink, and yellow.
Next, they have to produce a 400-pound batch of caramel, which is made from sugar, milk, corn syrup, emulsifier, and a dash of salt and wheat flour.
Once all the ingredients are placed in the kettle, it takes anywhere from Exactly how long it cooks depends, because the kettle shuts off automatically when the caramel reaches 244 degrees.
Then the caramel's off to its next stop.
We'll drop that down from the cooking kettles when it's complete over a cooling wheel.
The cooling wheel is a giant ice-water-filled roller that quickly cools down the boiling candy.
As it turns, the caramel sticks to the outer surface of the wheel, and after almost one full rotation, the candy's temperature has dropped to 110 degrees.
Then it's collected in trays and transferred to the batch-rolling room.
And here's where it all comes together.
The nougat is placed on top of the caramel, and then the whole thing is rolled up and taken to the batch roller.
The ratio that we use for nougat-to-caramel is 68% caramel to 32% nougat.
The batch roller takes the rolled up caramel and nougat and stretches and pulls it into a long, square-shaped snake.
That snake is then put into a stainless-steel trough, where it sits for a bit to give it a chance to harden.
We take that log, we take it out of the trough, and we feed that through some final sizing, which makes the piece a little bit smaller.
Then it's off to a slicer, which cuts it into pop-sized pieces.
From there, it goes straight to the wrapping machine.
So, it's a cellophane wrapper that is folded and then heated on the back, and the heat creates the seal by basically fusing it together.
There's one more step to making a finished pop, and that requires what they affectionately call the instickerator.
The instickerator has a pin that punches a hole through the wrapped caramel and the cellophane.
And then it indexes forward, and then the stick is pushed into that hole.
At last, the pops are ready to pack and ship.
But my guess is that cellophane doesn't stay on too long, because as anyone who's tasted a Slap Stix knows, there's nothing like the moment when you rip off the wrapper.
It's so shiny and smooth, and you can smell the banana.
And then I take my first bite.
It's so delicious.
Coming up, the coldest treat in the solar system.
Hey! We want it fast, and we want to take it with us.
The coffee to go, food to go.
But some foods aren't so easy to eat on the run, like an ice-cream sundae, right? Wrong.
Originally known as the Casco, this Fat Boy sundae on a stick has been around since 1925, when Casper Merrill put his degree in dairy science to work.
My grandfather, Casper Merrill, quickly determined that he couldn't make enough money just milking the cows on the family farm, and decided to start making ice cream.
And he created a novel way to eat that dairy goodness.
He cut those first blocks of ice cream into rectangular slices of vanilla ice cream, inserted a meat stick into them, dipped them in warm chocolate, and rolled them in roasted peanuts.
With the original method, Casper could make around 50 dozen a day.
Today on our three production lines, we produce 25 dozen per minute.
The speed at which they make these sundaes on a stick has certainly changed, but one thing hasn't.
We pride ourselves here at Casper's on keeping the recipe the very same that Casper developed 90 years ago.
It all starts with milk, sugar, butter, and some flavoring, which goes into a machine called a Likwifier to make the mix light and fluffy.
It's just like making a milkshake.
You take your milk, you take your ice cream, throw it in a blender and you turn it on.
That's kind of what the Likwifier does.
Now, the milk is raw milk straight from a cow, so once everything is added, the mixture is then pasteurized.
By pasteurizing the entire mixture instead of just the milk, it gives the ice cream a fuller flavor.
The mixture ages overnight in these giant holding tanks.
When the vanilla ice-cream mix is ready, we run it through the ice-cream freezers.
While it runs through the freezer, air is also being incorporated into the mixture to make it nice and creamy.
And here comes the cool part.
Once the mixture freezes and becomes ice cream, it's extruded through a popsicle-shaped mold.
Then, a machine inserts a stick and a wire cuts it to the perfect thickness.
And it all happens really fast.
We insert a stick into the ice cream at 85 sticks a minute.
At this point, it's kind of a soft ice-cream popsicle.
But not for long.
Once the ice-cream popsicle is cut, it will ride down a 550-foot freezer tunnel.
So, the temperature of our freeze tubes is almost equivalent to the temperature of Mars at night.
The goal of that Mars temperature freezer is to get the temperature of the ice cream center to zero degrees.
In order to get that zero core temp, we've got to get that tunnel down to about Whoa! There's only one way to get that cold liquid nitrogen.
They need to get that cold so they'll stay frozen during the next step.
Preparing it to be dipped in warm milk chocolate with peanuts to enjoy.
Once the frozen ice cream comes out of the tunnel, a specially designed tool is clamped to the sticks so the workers can grab them 10 at a time and dip them into a vat of chocolate and peanuts.
Next, it's on to a drying rack, where the excess chocolate-and-peanut coating drips off until they reach the perfect thickness.
After a mere 30 seconds, the coating hardens, and they're ready for packaging.
We then take those nut sundaes and wrap them, box them, case them, and they're ready for customers to enjoy.
And enjoy them, they do by the millions.
Last year, Casper's Ice Cream produced nearly seven million nut sundaes on a stick.
Count me in! Whoa! Coming up, a sticky, buttery treat that you'll go nuts for.
Hey! ay not come on a stick, but it's definitely sticky.
Not to mention gooey, crunchy, and delicious.
We're talking Long Grove Confectionery's toffee, a sweet and buttery treat coated inside and out with delicious pecans.
And did I mention buttery? It's loaded with butter, and butter brings out lots of flavor.
True dat.
And that's exactly what this recipe starts with a whole lot of butter.
They only use Grade "A," with a 30% fat content.
That ensures their toffee will have a creamy, rich flavor.
The higher the fat content, the more scrumptious the taste.
Each vat starts off with 19 pounds of butter, which is dumped into these massive copper vats.
Once the butter is in place, they start adding the other ingredients.
First, caramel is drizzled into the vat.
Then they add the other main ingredient sugar.
As all that mixes together, they pour in a whole bucket of crushed pecans.
And then finally, some baking soda and water.
The toffee then cooks at precisely 300 degrees.
If we wanted to go higher, it would actually have a harder bite to it.
the copper vat travels over to a 30-foot-long cooling table.
Look at that stream of gooey goodness.
But just pouring it on to the table isn't good enough to create perfect-sized pieces of toffee.
To spread the toffee, they've designed a specially made plow that pushes the mix to the edge of the table to spread the toffee out to the perfect thickness.
After 30 minutes on the cooling table, it's time to take that slab and create smaller chunks.
The thickness of each one may be the same, but every piece of toffee is unique.
That's because workers hand-break them into snack-sized bites.
We feel that that makes every piece a little unique and different.
The toffee then takes a ride on a conveyor belt to my favorite part of the process enrobing, which is a fancy name for being covered in delicious milk chocolate.
The candy glides underneath a waterfall of milk chocolate, coating every inch.
Workers roll the still-sticky chocolate-covered toffee in a huge vat of crushed pecans.
Once they're coated, the toffee is off to the cooling tunnel.
This tunnel is 50 feet long and takes roughly 12 minutes for the candy to make it through three temperature zones ranging from 50 to 55 degrees.
When they emerge, they're ready for packaging.
And that, too, is done by hand.
These ladies stack the bits of toffee into boxes, weigh them, and close the tops.
But I have a feeling they won't stay closed for long.
There's a great complement of flavors when you take toffee and chocolate and pecans and put them together.
It's a thin layer of toffee wrapped in chocolate and then with nuts on it.
So it's a bit dangerous.
Once you take one bite, it's really hard to stop eating it.
There's probably no more iconic treat on a stick than a "popstagle.
" This is when it's soft.
Put it on whoa.
After the truck goes by.
Action! Cut! Perfect!