Enrober

An enrober is a machine used in the confectionery industry to coat a food item with a coating medium, typically chocolate. Foods that are coated by enrobers include nuts, ice cream, toffee, biscuits and cookies. Enrobing is essentially a mechanized alternative to hand-dipping. Enrobing with chocolate extends a confection's shelf life.[1]

History

Coating a confection in chocolate was traditionally a slow manual process involving dipping the pieces into melted chocolate by hand. As demand for chocolate-coated sweets grew, it became impractical or impossible to employ enough people to dip sweets into melted chocolate to keep up with required production capacity.[2] To fulfill this need for high-capacity chocolate coating, the enrober machine was invented in France in 1903,[3] brought to the United States, and perfected to perform the work of at least twenty people.[2]

Process

A piece of Kendal Mint Cake enrobed in dark chocolate

The process of enrobing involves placing the items on the enrober's feed band, which may consist of a wire mesh or containers in which the confection to be enrobed are placed, with each container having drain holes to recover excess chocolate. The enrober maintains the coating medium at a controlled constant temperature and pumps the medium into a flow pan. The medium flows from the flow pan in a continuous curtain and bottoming bed that the food items pass through, completely coating them. A wire mesh conveyor belt then transports the coated confection to a cooling area.[4]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Yiu H. Hui; Stephanie Clark (2007). Handbook of Food Products Manufacturing. Wiley-Interscience. p. 686.
  2. 1 2 Louisiana Sugar Planters' Association, Louisiana Sugar Chemists' Association, American Cane Growers' Association (1913). The Louisiana planter and sugar manufacturer, Volume 51. Louisiana Planter and Sugar Manufacturer Co. p. 69.
  3. ↑ Arthur William Knapp (1920). Cocoa and chocolate: their history from plantation to consumer. Chapman and Hall, ltd. p. 152.
  4. ↑ MD Ranken; RC Kill (1997). Food Industries Manual. Springer. p. 439.

External links

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