A student checks the thickness of the coating on a batch of jelly beans during Candy School in Babcock Hall.
Pam Gesford (right), from The Hershey Company, helps students coat jelly beans during Candy School. scraper blade coating machine
Simon Wheler measures melted chocolate to use as a candy coating during Candy School.
Candy School students record a video of chocolate being drizzled over malted milk centers.
Brian Harmon, from Hamilton Capital Investments, and Meg Harris, from ConAgra, use a refractometer to measure the concentration of color on their jelly bean dye during Candy School in Babcock Hall.
Jelly bean centers are placed in a candy coating machine before being coated in sugar and dye.
Students learn soft and chocolate panning during Candy School in Babcock Hall at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Pam Gesford (right), from The Hershey Company, helps student Jennifer Fox (left) from Mars Wrigley measure ingredients for jelly beans during Candy School.
Candy School students choose flavors for jelly beans in Babcock Hall.
Melted chocolate is measured by a student at Candy School.
Candy School students choose flavors for jelly beans.
A student reads from a binder during Candy School.
A student checks the thickness of the coating on a batch of jelly beans during Candy School in Babcock Hall.
To make malted milk balls, you drizzle melted chocolate over candy and tumble ingredients together so the pieces get coated. Then, you fire up a shop vacuum.
The vacuum provides cool air to help the chocolate set as creamy layers are added to create the sweet treat, said Rich Hartel, a food science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Hartel runs the university’s Candy School — also known as the Confectionery Technology Course — which started in 1963 and has become so popular that it has a waitlist of people who want to attend.
“The course is … certainly the only comprehensive one of its kind that does lab stuff like this, that covers all of candy,” Hartel said.
Each year, about 34 employees from major candy companies come to Babcock Hall for two weeks to learn the science of candy. They practice making an array of treats, including chocolate and jelly beans.
“One candy that we can't make is licorice,” Hartel said, noting it “requires a specialized piece of equipment” that isn’t readily available in labs.
This year’s participants came from Russell Stover Chocolates, Ferrara, Mars Wrigley, Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and other businesses, where they work in research and development, quality control and other similar jobs.
In late July, the attendees donned blue hair nets and white lab coats and carried binders filled with information they learned in a classroom. They picked from different colored bottles to flavor jelly beans. The machines swirled with red, green and orange candies. One group chose a combination of pineapple, passionfruit and coconut.
Every so often, someone plucked a single jelly bean from a machine to inspect how it was developing. Working at Hormel Foods, Anne Geis said she doesn’t usually get to work with jelly beans. The company makes the Justin’s peanut butter cup brand.
Attendees in another lab kept the doors closed to control the humidity around the chocolate they were handling. The room was filled with a rich, cocoa aroma.
Simon Wheler measures melted chocolate to use as a candy coating during Candy School.
Participants ladled melted chocolate into white containers. They then sprinkled layers of chocolate on the nuts, raisins and malted milk balls spinning inside of machines called “panners.” Later, they polished the candies to look like the kind sold in grocery stores.
Hartel said the last day of class features a particularly fun lab. Attendees temper their own chocolate and make truffles. They also use a kind of conveyer to coat cookies with a waterfall of chocolate.
Each day, participants learn from industry experts. On Monday, for instance, the lab was led by Pam Gesford, from The Hershey Company, and Michael Gordon, of Arway-Long Grove Confections.
Students may take home the candy they make over the two weeks. At the end, Hartel collects whatever is left and announces to people who work in Babcock Hall that “the candy store is open,” he said.
Hartel’s office is filled with candy year-round. His desk and shelves are covered with Junior Mints, Smarties and Pez dispensers.
“I’m always looking out for something like this,” Hartel said Monday, as he reached for a small, pink, plastic toilet called Sour Flush.
Sour Flush encourages consumers to dip a candy plunger into sour powder dip inside the toilet bowl. Hartel said he added the unique treat to a candy bag that he gave to students as part of a final exam.
“From a technical standpoint, there's actually some pretty interesting science that goes on,” he said.
Candy School students choose flavors for jelly beans in Babcock Hall.
Candy-making has changed a lot over the years as new technology is developed, he said. Reducing sugar content is “a big thing these days.”
While Hartel specialized in sugar crystallization for his doctorate, he said he never expected his career would revolve around candy. He’s run the Candy School for about a quarter of a century. He’s also written a couple of books on the topic, including one with his daughter, AnnaKate Hartel. In “Candy Bites: The Science of Sweets,” the Hartels describe testing whether Baby Ruth candy bars actually float, as depicted in the movie “Caddyshack.”
As Candy School students practiced in the lab on Monday, Hartel offered a message to people with a sweet tooth.
“It seems like a lot of people are afraid of candy, thinking that it's all bad stuff,” Hartel said. “But it's really not. … There’s room for candy in most people’s diets. You just have to learn how to control it and do it in moderation.”
“If you’re going to eat a candy bar, eat a salad,” he said.
Students learn soft and chocolate panning during Candy School in Babcock Hall at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Pam Gesford (right), from The Hershey Company, helps students coat jelly beans during Candy School.
Jelly bean centers are placed in a candy coating machine before being coated in sugar and dye.
Brian Harmon, from Hamilton Capital Investments, and Meg Harris, from ConAgra, use a refractometer to measure the concentration of color on their jelly bean dye during Candy School in Babcock Hall.
A student reads from a binder during Candy School.
Candy School students record a video of chocolate being drizzled over malted milk centers.
Pam Gesford (right), from The Hershey Company, helps student Jennifer Fox (left) from Mars Wrigley measure ingredients for jelly beans during Candy School.
Melted chocolate is measured by a student at Candy School.
Candy School students choose flavors for jelly beans.
Becky Jacobs joined the Cap Times on April 1 and covers higher education. She was previously a business and paper industry reporter for The Post-Crescent in Appleton, a women's issues reporter for The Salt Lake Tribune and covered various beats at newspapers in Indiana and North Dakota.
Support Becky's work and local journalism by becoming a Cap Times member. Follow her on Twitter @ruthyjacobs.
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