Chocolate Enrobing

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this is our 30' enrobing line

One of the most interesting ways chocolate candy is made is a modern method that involves a machine called an "enrober".     Imagine a cupcake cup in which you place a pretzel.   Fill the cup up with warm chocolate.    Then make slits or slots on all four sides so that the extra chocolate will run out of the cup and into a catching tray.

Now when you flood the cup with chocolate it coats the pretzel, but as the chocolate flows back out of the cup the pretzel remains coated.  If you move this cup on a belt through a cooling tunnel the chocolate will harden to its final form.   Suppose there are 12 cups in a row on a conveyor line, all filled with pretzels.  The cups pass beneath a nozzle that fills the cups with chocolate.   The overflow runs out through the slits in the cup.

The above method would not be perfect if you need to have chocolate on the bottom of the piece.

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Our enrober and cooling tunnel - 34 feet long

When you make chocolates in an enrober that needs a chocolate bottom first, before you place an item in the cup you add a small amount of chocolate in the cup bottom.  The cup then passes through a chilling tunnel where the bottom sets.  The cup is then filled with a nut or fruit center.    Then the cup is top flooded with chocolate.  The entire piece passes through a cooling tunnel to make the final hard set.    Often this is the way production chocolate pieces are made for the large companies. 

The excess chocolate recirculates and is used again to flood the next cups with chocolate.   This is an enrobing line and you can always tell enrobing because there is a flat bottom on the chocolate item. 

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Smaller chocolate makers hand dip the chocolates - one at a time - and this is slower but more individualized.   An enrober give constant quality, appearance, and large volume of products.

This method of chocolate coating is machinery intensive and requires expensive equipment.  A normal plant might make 2,000 pounds of enrobed chocolate pieces on a typical production run!

Read more about Chocolate:

*Chocolate Dipping

*Chocolate Enrobing

*Chocolate Depositing

*Chocolate Panning

*Chocolate Glossary

*Chocolate Tempering

 

 
Tip of the day

The Mexicans created the turkey in chocolate sauce, called a mole sauce.   The sauce is really a rich, spicy, and savory mole sauce not unlike an Indian korma sauce made with almonds and spices.


Our favorite recipes

Chocolate Truffles

a classic candy recipe

2/3rd cups cream
10 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped
8 oz bittersweet chocolate, tempered
1/4 cup rum or fruit liquor
2 tbspoons butter
1 cup dusting powder made by sifting equal parts cocoa powder and confectioner sugar

Bring the cream to a boil.  Put the 10 chopped chocolate in a bowl, pour over the cream and beat steadily.  If any of the chocolate does not melt, put the bowl in a bain marie (bowl of quite warm water) to warm the mixture gently.

Beat in the butter, add the rum or fruit liquor slowly.  Chill for 10 minutes in the refrigerator until thick but not hard.  Put in a new bowl and melt for a few seconds in a bain marie to dissolve the skin which will have formed, stirring slowly.    The mixture should look like a soft butter cream frosting.

Put the ganache mixture in a pastry piping bag and pipe into kisses on a tray lined with wax paper.  Each truffle should be just a bit smaller than the size of a walnut half.. 

Refrigerate until cool, then dip into the tempered chocolate using two forks and finally place the finished piece on the dusting powder. Coat.  Shake off any surplus dusting powder using a sieve.  Makes about 50.

More recipes


Little known facts

How to Taste Chocolate

Chocolate tasting is a bit different from wine tasting.   All five sense come into play.
Touch.  The point is to observe the speed of melting

more about candy


Half a century of fun

The Nut Factory started in 1952 as a roaster of peanuts. We are located in Spokane, Washington. Over the years The Nut Factory has grown into a large snack food manufacturer. We ship over 400 product every day to businesses everywhere throughout the United States.

Our history


Other interesting web sites

Where Great Chef's Buy
Has a Terrific
Source of Connoisseur Foods


Raw Gourmet
Cooking Recipes

Recipes For Living
Healthy and Well

More links


Nut and Snack Commodity Market

Here is a wonderful Nut Crop information site.

This site is loaded with walnut facts.