Episode 15
Cake Sprinkles
Believe it or not, cake sprinkles have been around since the late 18th century when French confectioners used them as decorations. Chocolate sprinkles are believed to have been invented in 1936 by a Dutchman responding to a little boy's request for a chocolate bread topping.
Cake sprinkles come in a variety of colors and can be found decorating and adding texture to many treats such as cupcakes, donuts, ice cream, and cookies. They can quickly turn a tasty treat into a visual one, as well.
A variety of liquid and powder food colorants are among the ingredients used to make these colorful dessert decorations. Shortening is one of the other ingredients. A worker adds an exact quantity of shortening to a mixing tank. Water in the tank is heated as the mixture is agitated. Within minutes, the ingredients are absorbed. A worker adds powdered sugar to a dry mixer. By the time all the needed sugar has been added, the machine is full. He adds a pre-measured amount of liquid food colorant. Different food colorants and different amounts of colorants produce different colored sprinkles and different shades of colors. The mixture of water and shortening are added to the dry mixer containing the powdered sugar and colorant. He closes the lid and begins the dough-mixing process. About 15 minutes later, a worker opens the lid to reveal the freshly mixed and colorful dough.
A worker pushes the dough along a conveyor into a chute. It leads to a wide collection area and another conveyor machine which moves the dough toward an extruder. As the dough falls into the extruder, it's forced through many small holes. It emerges as these long, narrow strands which fall onto another conveyor. The holes through which the dough is forced are in a big plate. To make sure the quality of the product doesn't vary, room temperature in the production area is kept constant, and the relative humidity is kept at 50%. That same ambient air dries the dough as it moves along the conveyor through a tunnel. About 10 seconds after it enters the tunnel, it falls into a holding vat with a pail. A worker sifts through the dough to make sure it's properly dried. She lifts the dough-filled pail and places it on a trolley for the trip to a tumbler.
The tumbler breaks the strands into smaller sizes. The dough usually spends about 10 minutes here. Any longer and the strand bits will be too small. A nozzle sprays a mixture of confectioner's glaze and carnauba wax. The mixer keeps the cake sprinkles from leaking color once they're placed in finished products. Now dried and trimmed for size, a worker removes the sprinkles from the tumbler and pours them onto a shaker table. Properly sized pieces of dough fall through a screen along with smaller pieces as larger clumps are sorted out. Before dropping to another conveyor, a second filter below removes under-sized granules. The sprinkles fall into a plastic-lined packaging tub.
Cake sprinkles come in a variety of colors. A tumbler mixes all the colors together in order to package a multi-colored product. The various colors are mixed together for about five minutes before a worker samples the mixture to make sure the variety of colors is consistent. Once the sprinkles have been thoroughly mixed, they fall into a line of bottles. A jet of air directed at the top of the bottles keeps sprinkles away from the cap area. The capping machine not only positions the cap, it also spins the bottle to screw the cap into place. The capped bottles head to the labeling area. An adhesive label is applied to the bottle.
These colorful sprinkles are sure to make any dessert dazzle.
