Iwai assured me that this scent changed daily, often more than once a day, according to what was being made. He also warned me not to run, because I might slip in my new shoes. Wafers were the beginning of the line, the beginning of every single Kit Kat. I stood mesmerized for a few minutes under an archway of uncut wafers, like edible golden window panes, which were being cooled by ambient air before they reached an actual cooler.
I heard almost nothing Iwai said over the sharp clanging and drone of the machinery. The factory is large and open, loud and clean, its production lines totally transparent.
But the wafers had been baked out of sight, most likely between engraved, molded plates. Now they looked like thin, delicate altar breads, floating above us. They formed a continuously moving line, the sheets traveling up and curving toward pumps of cream in the distance. What makes a Kit Kat a Kit Kat?
A few people said it was the logo itself, in big blocky letters, embossed on the top of each bar. Wafers are an art form within the food industry. Not that he knew exactly what it was. The wafer was the corporate secret, the heavily guarded soul of the Kit Kat. But like many lightweight, low-fat industrial wafers, the Kit Kat wafer is, very likely, mostly air and gelatinized wheat flour.
It is crisp but not brittle. Crunchy but not dense. It is fragile but still satisfying to bite into. It is totally and alarmingly dry to the touch, like packing material. Plain, the wafer is almost but not entirely tasteless. It has a very gentle sort of toastiness, barely there, but with an almost bready flavor.
A sort of toast ghost. Not that it matters. The company recycles these substandard wafers as local animal feed.
The good wafers — smooth, intact, deeply and evenly embossed — move along the line. They are covered with cream, then sandwiched with another wafer and more cream. The arms of a huge, gentle machine with extraordinary fine-tuned motor functions do all the work of building the Kit Kat, smoothing the cream and pressing the wafer on top of it, then pass the large, sheet-cake-size sandwiches along a slow conveyor belt through a massive cooler.
On the molding line, the chocolate depositor fills empty Kit Kat molds with tempered chocolate, and the fingers are dropped in and covered with more chocolate. A scraper removes excess chocolate and smooths the surface. When the chocolate is cooled, the bars are popped out and whipped through a wrapping machine. The production line was a barely interrupted blur of white, like dotted lines rushing by on the highway, becoming indistinguishable from one another.
I learned that Kit Kats were slightly, subtly different all over the world. In the United States, Hershey uses nonfat milk and milk fat, while in Japan, the factories work with whole-milk powder. Almost everything changes, but the wafers? The wafers never change. The wafers have a fixed standard that needs to be maintained, and deviations are not acceptable. Standing beneath the fresh, moving wafers, I asked Iwai if I could hold one, as if it were a newborn, and I did not expect him to let me.
But he reached into the line and pulled one out, passing it toward me with two hands. All I knew was that the wafer was huge, golden, marked with square cups and totally weightless. That if this was the soul of a Kit Kat, then holding the soul of a Kit Kat was like holding nothing at all. Kikyouya, originally a small, family-run sweet shop that specialized in kintsuba , a Japanese sweet filled with red-bean paste, has been making shingen mochi since the late s.
Before I knew this, I ate shingen mochi in my hotel room, as Tokyo was being soaked by the outermost edges of a passing typhoon. With my first bite, I sent a little cloud of roasted soybean powder into the air and coughed with surprise. The rice cakes were soft, chewy, delicious. And where the brown-sugar syrup trapped the powder, it turned into a gorgeous caramel sludge.
Tomoko Ohashi was the lead developer on the Kikyou shingen mochi Kit Kat. It was more like a real pastry kitchen, full of dehydrated fruit powders and matcha organized in tubs, chocolate molds and serrated knives and a marble counter for tempering chocolate. The challenge with shingen mochi, Ohashi said, was finding the balance between the soybean powder and the syrup. Because the sweet is so adaptable, everyone who eats it calibrates it obsessively, adjusting the ingredients so it tastes the way they like.
Ohashi started work on the new flavor last September, and she finished it in May. In tests, she would make about 50 pieces of four to five different versions by hand, tempering chocolate on the marble table, and then taste them side by side, looking for the right balance of soybean powder to sugar syrup. Did the sticky rice in the Kit Kat help to mimic the mochi texture? After all the testing, Ohashi concentrated all the flavorings in the cream filling: the sticky rice as well as soybean powder and brown-sugar syrup.
The bars went on sale on Oct. Standing in the test kitchen, I unwrapped the new flavored Kit Kat and broke into it with a crack. The bar was a mini, two tiny connected ingots. On my way, I stopped for lunch at a small noodle restaurant and sat by the window, eating a pile of salted plums.
I could see busloads of tourists filing out in the parking lot, their floppy hats secured with strings, their shirts wet with sweat. They were fruit hunters. Yamanashi is green, dense with red pine and white oak forest and beautifully kept orchards that cut deep into its slopes.
Fruit hunters pay to eat as much ripe, seasonal fruit as they like in a short span of time. Say, 30 minutes of thin-skinned peaches, or fat pink grapes, or strawberries, warmed from the sun, dipped into pools of sweetened condensed milk.
Fruit hunters travel to eat the fruit on site, right off the trees, in their allotted time. When the concept was explained to me, I thought the time limit seemed embarrassing. It was practical, it was beautiful and it acknowledged that souvenirs were, like memories, at best only approximations of the moments they represented. That it was, in fact, completely impossible to remove a taste from its origin without changing it in the process. The Kikyou shingen mochi Kit Kat was smooth to the touch, shiny.
It had a brilliant, crumbless snap, which gave way to a pure white chocolate and caramel flavor and a lightly savory note. It was sweet, it was good. It was in balance.
And it recalled fresh Kikyou shingen mochi, vaguely, like a memory gone soft around the edges. She has won two James Beard Foundation awards for restaurant criticism.
Like any good immigrant, I know on which bodega shelves to find the food portals to my childhood. But the one food item I cannot find in San Francisco is the candy of my childhood. I grew, as we say in Colombia, a punta de Bon Bon Bum.
In much of Latin America, the phrase has become shorthand to describe a body type big butt and skinny legs , and all lollipops, no matter the brand, are known as bon bon bums. Shakira has been known to carry a few Bon Bon Bums at all times in her purse.
At the start, 20 workers were responsible for the production of four million lollipops per month. Today, in that same factory, workers produce more than 40 times as many. The first candy was a flat sucker made out of cane sugar and natural juices. My father liked them, but his absolute favorite was the caramel drop infused with Colombian coffee.
For my older sister, Francis, the palm-sized plastic tray of chocolate-hazelnut and vanilla spreads was a necessity. She spent half an hour with the tiny spatula, meticulously eating and selectively mixing the halved creams. For my little cousins, the powdery marshmallows that looked like soft, pastel corkscrews were the most fun. They waved them in front of us like fishing poles until we caved and took a bite. Colombina was born in the Cauca Valley, where the land is hot and humid.
The air smells of sugar cane and pineapple, which grow abundantly in the region. The vision for Colombina came to the founder, Hernando Caicedo, in the s as he tended his small sugar-cane mill. It was at this mill that the idea of candy with a tropical flair took hold. In just a few years, Caicedo rounded up the funds, readied a warehouse and traveled with a flat lollipop machine from the United States to the town of La Paila.
The factory in La Paila has become perhaps the largest hard-candy plant in all of South America. Two thousand three hundred people work there, and it is not uncommon to find families where three generations have worked on the factory floor. Colombina provides day care for its workers, offers student scholarships and even holds a national soccer tournament where, this year, 34, young players had the chance to be scouted by the professional clubs.
When the company bids the old year goodbye, it does so in a nearby coliseum, with the help of a salsa brass band, a generous spread of nourishments and refreshments and much dancing and revelry. A look inside the Colombina plant shows how this old-fashioned corporate philosophy extends to the factory floor. In part to keep more workers employed, many of the hard candies at Colombina are still mixed and prepared by hand.
The large vats, where workers stir cane sugar until it boils and takes on a glowing amber color, date back to before Bon Bon Bums had been created, as do the iron caldrons where the fruit extracts and amber sugar combine into highly pigmented neon globs. Workers in white aprons and brick-red rubber gloves hand-turn the candy — called caramelo at this stage — with long rods in order to cool them. The neon goo will be used to make Bon Bon Bums and Fruticas, candy drops sometimes shaped like hearts and lemons.
Machines — a mix of old and new — take over once the caramelo has set. One of the new machines might churn out small armies of bright red gummy bears, injecting them with candied syrups and bathing them in hot chocolate that will dry into a soft shell in seconds. This is the process for the Grissly ChocoSplash, a favorite among the workers on the factory floor.
But even the old machines keeps precise, hypnotic movements, spitting out strings of molded candy at regular intervals. The candy fresh from one set of machines will then travel down moving belts, awaiting hand inspection. In gloves and protective glasses cinched over their hooded jumpsuits, workers add the final touches, discarding flawed specimens or steering the candies into the best position on the belt, almost ready to be packaged.
It had been 10 years since I last had a Bon Bon Bum. When I turned 24, I deemed I was too old for them. Recently, the hankering returned, and I deemed I was old enough to have them again.
I scanned the bodega shelves in San Francisco one more time before placing an order online. We all have our rituals for consuming candy, but I had forgotten what ceremonies I performed when consuming a Bon Bon Bum. Soon my mouth became full of familiars — the sweet and tart making my tongue surge, the accidental clack of the hard candy against the back of my teeth. I remembered that I used to try to make the orb perfectly round, sucking selectively, taking the Bon Bon Bum out to check my progress.
I continued the old task, until the very first champagne-pink edges of the gum broke through the surface. Then, the sensation jolted childhood memories from me I did not know I still possessed. The ruby globe shrank and shrank until all that was left was the heart of gum. This was the metronome of our childhood. Once the Bon Bon Bum was gone, we ironed out the wrapper, and I held onto one end and Francis held onto the other. We would make a wish, then pull.
Whoever got the longer wrapper got the wish. I wished for peace on earth, the survival of all whales, my first kiss. My first kiss came at night in the middle of the street. It was bookended by my taking a Bon Bon Bum out of my mouth and putting it back in. At slow hours, I held my Bon Bon Bum to the sun, watching the translucent red planet glow from within.
There were air bubbles trapped inside, in the dazzling undersurface of the lollipop, which itself was striated like the radial veins of a banana leaf.
Nona pushed against the balled-up masa in her kitchen, and I on the floor used the slow and steady force of my tongue to eat away at the candy.
He would stand with his rifle at the edge of the jungle and fire just once up at the sky toward the palm trees, just as my grandfather used to do. And then, in the startled silence after the shot, I would unwrap another Bon Bon Bum. Christopher Payne is a photographer who specializes in architecture and American industry. Please upgrade your browser. Site Navigation Site Mobile Navigation. Food Stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. There would be need of sisu to face what might come shortly.
Finland ranked fifth worldwide in per capita candy consumption according to a study by the London-based market-research firm Euromonitor International. Read more. The Candy Issue. Illustration by Ori Toor. We need to hide this paragraph. Candy Grid Akuafo bar Ghana. Chupa Chups Spain. Bacio Italy. Durian candy Malaysia. Allens Fantales Australia. Lokum Turkey. Pass Pass Pulse India. White Rabbit China. Red Vines United States.
Brigadeiro Brazil. Coffee Crisp Canada. Cri Cri Venezuela. Motiv Zuckerl Austria. Bon o Bon Argentina.
Pastillas de Leche Philippines. Jelly Babies England. Edinburgh Rock Scotland. TomTom Nigeria. Super Twister Pakistan. Gaz Iran. Ghana South Korea. Lacta Greece.
Ptasie Mleczko Poland. Amazon Pops Zambia. Pineapple Chunks New Zealand. Pelon Pelo Rico Mexico. Caprice Algeria. Hi-Chew Japan. Beacon Allsorts South Africa. Les Anis de Flavigny France. Sublime Peru. Shokolad Para Israel. Akuafo bar Ghana. Kit Kats begin their lives as large sheets of wafer, which are sandwiched with cream and cut into small fingers.
Here, the individual segments are being coated at the factory in Kasumigaura. Kit Kat flavors including plum wine, purple sweet potato and Shinshu apple at a Don Quijote megastore in Tokyo. Tomoko Ohashi making green-tea and strawberry Kit Kats in the Kasumigaura test kitchen. Chocolate being poured over the wafers in molds. Wafers in production at the factory. An assortment of Kit Kat flavors found in Japan, including sake. Tomoko Ohashi making green-tea and strawberry Kit Kats in the test kitchen.
Left: Shingen mochi produced by Kikyouya. Right: The new shingen-mochi-flavored Kit Kat. Strawberry flavored Bon Bon Bums being sorted in the hard-candy department.
The company produces 16 flavors of the lollipop. Cherry-flavored Tiger Pops are removed from a press before being wrapped.
The pan turns clockwise to mix the contents, and its speed will determine the texture produced. Workers placing bear-shaped gummies on a conveyor belt to be covered in chocolate, to create ChocoSplash. Pouring of candy mixture from a kettle onto cooling table. The candy is called caramelo at this stage.
After being cooked in large kettles, the caramelo is poured onto a table and hand-turned to cool and mix the flavors.
Candy is fed into a batch roller and gets rolled until it becomes a small rope, from which the lollipop balls are cut. The mixer for Max Frulato Caramelo Blando candy. Gum balls being sorted before they are coated. Extrusion of bubble gum that will go in the center of Bon Bon Bum lollipops. Extrusion of bubblegum that will go in the center of Bon Bon Bum lollipops. The gum is cut into loaves before being moved to the hard-candy department. Choco Disck Chocolate Lentils inventory.
This chewing gum is watermelon-flavored with a sour filling. Riding on polar bears and listening to metal. That's epic! I want to do that every day of my life. I let most strangers think I have a husband when in fact I have a wife cause I don't wanna embarass their assumptions or come out to a stranger I will never see again. We both do it! Ahhh, bottle recycling machines Briliant thing to save up to 10 euros for bigger shopping or some night out ;.
It's not the lack of milk that's nightmarish, it's the fact that you just asked for something thwy don't have. Anyone can write on Bored Panda.
Start writing! Follow Bored Panda on Google News! Follow us on Flipboard. Your image is too large, maximum file size is 8 MB. Not your original work? Add source. Error occurred when generating embed. Please check link and try again. This comment is hidden. Click here to view. When someone is speaking close to you that you can smell their body odor, but you can't step back because that would be rude.
So you hold your breath, fake a smile and wish to die For a Finn smelling someone's bad odor is just a reminder, that you too might smell bad when close to others. One more reason to keep 3 meter gap in future. While close to someone smelling bad, you would also hope it is not you that smell but the other guy.
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He frequently speaks in Finnish idioms, many of which are literally translated into English regardless of context. Control Wiki Explore.
Broderick Northmoor. Subreddit Community Discord. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? Edit source History Talk 0. Cancel Save. Universal Conquest Wiki. Jahaa, jaa-a, you think there's a dog buried in this?
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