Candymakers go to work every day to make sweet treats for kids and adults alike. Have you ever stopped and wondered how your favorite chocolate bar or sour candy is made?
“We make all types of chocolate treats,” said Winn Harger, owner of Rheb?s Candies, located in Baltimore. “First we roll out the candy in 80-pound batches, and then we coat it in chocolate.”
Rheb?s makes an array of candies that includes chocolate truffles, creams, nuts and chews, and depending on the type of candy, the chocolate may be blended or melted onto different treats to create a unique taste, Harger said.
“We do all the candies by hand so each one has a distinct mark on top of it,” he said.
Although Rheb?s makes its own candy, it also works with a chocolate factory, Cargill Cocoa and Chocolate.
“Chocolate is made from cocoa beans, and cocoa beans come from cocoa trees,” said Rick Schwartz, director of technical operations at Cargill. Cocoa beans are harvested and dried out before they are sent to factories, Cargill said.
“The first step in making chocolate, which is probably one of the most important steps, is roasting the cocoa beans,” he said. During this process, good beans and bad beans are sorted out, and flavor is developed within the good beans. “Next, we remove the shells of the beans and grind the beans to make a liquor,” Schwartz said. “After that, we mix ingredients into the liquor, then we enrich it to remove unwanted flavors and create certain flavors, and that?s chocolate.”
Malcolm Favor is a senior at Reginald F. Lewis High School. He is an intern for The Baltimore Examiner.
