CLEVELAND — There is science behind some of your favorite sweets. Like classic peanut brittle.
“What you're seeing going on inside this copper pot is we're boiling the sugar and glucose,” said President & CEO, Malley’s Chocolates, Mike Malley.
That’s to remove the water before the peanuts are added. The proteins mix with the sugar starting the Maillard browning reaction.
“It really involves the amino acids, and it reduces the sugars that give it that caramelization color,” remarked Malley as the mixture quickly turned brown.
Adding baking soda aerates the mixture by releasing carbon dioxide.
“Now we're going to really see the aeration of the brittle. That baking soda. Salt. There. There's the foam I was looking for,” said Malley seeing the change.
Timing is important, as the brittle needs to be stretched before it cools.
“He's got to pour it out while it's still in a very liquid form,” said Malley. “And then you're going to see as we spread it out to make it nice and thin, like a classic brittle.”
Aeration is also key to make the handmade slab marshmallows nice and airy.
“The marshmallow a lot like nuggets and other things. It's an aerated confection, which means there's air in there that gives it that sort of whipped look,” said Malley. “There's a whole whipping process that iterates it with the glucose and the sugars and how the molecules interact and react with each other.”
Large 10-pound slabs of dark chocolate are ground up small pieces to make what is called seed. A base of a number of confections.
“We're blending it in with the other chocolate to form a crystallization effect, and we're blending it in with the cocoa butter and higher-grade chocolates, it's very important that you can do that process,” Malley explained.
Once the chocolate is melted together, or tempered, the cooks continually monitor the temperature to ensure the appearance and taste of the chocolate. Following the recipe will only get you so far, it’s the experience with the process that makes it come together.
“Some of our cooks have been here 20 years, and they can just whip through making, you know, a lot of our nuggets, our creams, our peanut brittle, our caramels. And they can tell things by sight,” said Malley. “But they follow a really rigid process that's really been honed over years.”
You may not remember the science, when it tastes so good.
Valentine’s Day is a big holiday for Malley’s Chocolate, as you can imagine. But the candy makers don’t get much of a break, as they are already making chocolate bunnies for Easter.