Episode 1
Lemon Tarts
When life gives you lemons, why bother making lemonade when you can indulge in a luscious lemon tart? Not too sour, not too sweet, a lemon tart is a delectable dessert that you can make yourself, or even better, leave it to the baking pros and buy ready-made.
This thaw-and-serve lemon tart has a shortbread shell and creamy lemon filling topped with buttercream.
Each batch of dough produced in this industrial mixer yields 449 tart shells. The first step is to lightly blend margarine, sugar, and salt for 2 or 3 minutes. Next, add pasteurized eggs and mix for about 2 minutes at slow speed. Fast mixing makes the dough too tight, causing it to crack. They add white flour while continuing to mix slowly until the ingredients are well-blended. Once the dough is ready, workers put it through what is actually a hamburger forming machine. It extrudes 1/4-pound dough patties. Workers place them in the middle of a non-stick aluminum tart pan three at a time. They mount the pan on a press, covering it with plastic. A die strikes the pan, flattening and spreading the dough evenly. The pans go into the oven, where they rotate for 23 to 24 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. The dough bakes into a shortbread tart shell.
Lemon juice and lemon oil are the key ingredients in the creamy filling. First, workers melt margarine on a stove, then mix in sugar, lemon powder, and food starch to thicken the mix. They blend for 2 minutes, then add eggs. After another 5 to 8 minutes of mixing, they pour in boiled lemon juice and lemon oil. Boiling these acidic ingredients prevents the fats from curdling. The filling is ready, so they move the bowl from the mixer over to the depositing line. A pump transfers the contents to a hopper feeding a depositor. The depositor is pre-set to squirt 22 ounces of lemon filling in each tart. The filled tarts go into the oven for 11 minutes. The lemon tarts come out of the oven, cool at room temperature for 2 to 3 hours, then go into a freezer overnight.
The next day, workers remove the frozen tarts from the pans. They gently remove any specks of browning, then spray on a light layer of glaze made from apricots. This adds a hint of sweetness. The glaze also prevents the filling from cracking when it's thawed for serving. Next, they put the tart in an automated cake slicer. The turntable rotates as the tart is cut into 12 slices with papers in between each one. This is for restaurants who serve the dessert by the slice. Workers embellish each slice with a flower made of buttercream, a decadent mixture of butter, egg whites, and sugar. They complete each flower with a dot of lemon filling in the center. This lemon tart is finished. They wrap it in a cardboard cake band printed with the brand name. They seal the tart in plastic film, insert it into a retail box, and ship it frozen to a store or restaurant.
To serve this tasty dessert, you simply defrost at room temperature for about a half hour.
Episode 4
Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars
As any sweet tooth can attest, there's no end to the flavors you can pair with chocolate. A classic combination is milk chocolate and peanut butter. The saltiness of the peanut butter is the perfect foil to the sweetness of milk chocolate.
This bar features a thick layer of milk chocolate around a sweet, salty and crunchy peanut butter candy center.
Making that peanut butter candy center is the tricky part. To make the candy part of it, the factory combines liquid sugar, corn syrup, coconut oil, and molasses. They mix and heat these ingredients for about 8 minutes. The cooked candy is poured into a large stainless steel bowl. Next, they add leftovers from the previous batch of candy. They call these leftovers "rework" because they rework them into this new batch. Once the rework has mixed with the hot, new candy, they empty the bowl onto a cold stainless steel table. They blend the candy until the two merge into a sweet, gooey mess. Once the candy has cooled a bit, workers fold it up and carry it over to the pulling station. There, they make a pocket in the center and fill it with vanilla extract. They start up the pulling machine, which stretches the candy non-stop for about 5 minutes. This infuses the candy with air so that its consistency resembles taffy rather than hard candy. They transfer the candy to a belt that carries it to the weaving machine. The machine's rollers flatten the candy into a thin sheet. Then a pump draws piping hot peanut butter from this tank and deposits it in a generous layer onto the candy sheet. Workers roll up the sheet until it reaches a specific diameter. At that point, they fold and place it on a sheet without peanut butter, called a blank sheet. The next roller presses the folded roll flat onto the blank sheet. Workers roll up the blank sheet, sealing the peanut butter candy inside. This complex assembly is what forms the flaky layers in the chocolate bar center.
Workers round the sheet between two rollers and feed it to the rope sizer. It stretches the peanut butter candy into a rope that's the exact diameter of the chocolate bar center. The next machine makes a pinch mark every 5 inches, or the length of a chocolate bar. The linked centers enter a cooling tunnel. They exit 5 minutes later rigid. The links separate as they drop to the next conveyor belt. They pass through a second refrigerated tunnel, which finishes cooling them. The centers move into lanes that feed the enrober, a machine that coats the centers with chocolate. Workers make sure the centers are single file and properly spaced. The enrober is like a confectionery car wash. Centers pass through a hot rinse of milk chocolate first. Then, an overhead dryer blows off any excess, leaving behind a 3-milliliter layer of chocolate. The bars enter a final cooling tunnel to harden the chocolate.
Workers transfer the finished chocolate peanut butter bars to a conveyor belt for packaging. As the bars approach the wrapping machine, the in-feeder arranges them in single file. Rolls of printed plastic film unwind into the machine's forming box. In the blink of an eye, the machine folds, wraps, and heat-seals the film around each passing bar. A revolving knife slices the wrapper between bars. Then, it's off to the packaging department, where workers pack them 24 to a box.
These chocolate peanut butter bars are ready to be devoured by anyone in the mood for a crunchy, sweet, and salty chocolate snack.
