M&M's, Bill Gates, and smooth candy coating
Chatty freely admits that she thinks about silly stuff WAY too much. And that once she thinks of something, silly or not, she has a burning need to find an answer to whatever has her pondering about the subject in question.
In her last post, that little bit about M&M's she put in toward the end got her to wondering how they actually make M&M’s. They've been around since at least 1941, so the process can't be TOO complicated, and yet the candy coating is so smooth, and each piece so uniformly sized. And when she bites into each little nugget, although the peanuts within are different sizes (sometimes there’s only half a peanut, and then Chatty feels gypped) the candies themselves are usually much the same size. Hmmmmm.
Her first thought was to check The Food Network. Chatty just loves the Food Network, and those shows about how things are made. Maybe she missed the episode on M&M’s? Was there one? Well, Chatty checked. Apparently that guy who goes around finding out how stuff is made hasn’t gotten around to M&M’s yet. Or, more likely, the Mars Company doesn’t want to show him (or us) how it’s really done. (One must not let too much daylight shine in lest one spoil the magic, and all that.)
But now, Chatty MUST KNOW.
She figures a mold is involved, at least for the plain ones. But how do they get the hard candy shell to coat so evenly? If you have a mold, you can get the chocolate to be uniform. But how do you get the candy coating on without leaving a seam in the middle?
Well, some kind of spray, probably. But then, how to keep the candies from sticking together?
More research must be done. And yes, even Chatty admits that researching this is getting sillier by the moment.
Then WHAM! Microsoft pops up in her searches. Frankly, Chatty is convinced that Bill Gates owns the world, so therefore isn’t surprised when Microsoft shows up in any search she does. But she had NO idea that this whole M&M question is one that is frequently posed to some poor sod lucky person when interviewing for a position at Microsoft! Chatty feels much less silly now, and feels downright smart when more searching uncovers the mention of both "molds" and "spraying".
But apparently NOBODY - even Bill Gates – has the absolute, definitive answer. And as anyone who has read this far will realize, only an absolute, definitive answer - preferably by an eye-witness - will satisfy Chatty at this point.
So, have any of you toured a factory and seen M&M’s being made? Do any of you know someone who works for the company and might be coerced persuaded to spill the beans M&M’s?
Also, since an alert reader pointed out that M&M’s are very much like the Smarties so beloved by the English and Canadians, among others (and which have been made by Nestle's since 1937 and come in purple as WELL as blue), let’s not ignore the possibility of bribing asking someone in Canada or England about the process.
Meanwhile, if you are now wondering about how those little white "M"s get neatly embossed smack-dab in the middle of each and every candy, forget it - that’s a whole new silly question.
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