”Five children–and only five–were going to be allowed into Mr. Willy Wonka`s chocolate factory. The lucky five would get to see all the mysterious machinery in the factory where the world`s most wonderful candy was made.”
–”Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,”
by Roald Dahl (Alfred A. Knopf, 1964)
Charlie Bucket, hero in the classic children`s novel, ”Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” is one of the lucky five who slip behind the scenes of Willy Wonka`s chocolate factory. There, amidst a chocolate river with a pink Viking boat, and mysterious hoops, loops and grinding machines, Charlie discovers the magic that turns cocoa beans into glorious candy.
Is chocolate really made that way? Does affable, wise ol` Willy Wonka own the best kind of business in the world? And can you help but get excited in a big industrial building when the awesome, sterile-looking machinery churns out pounds and pounds of America`s favorite confection?
There is one sure way to find out: Slip into the World`s Finest Chocolate factory, 4801 S. Lawndale Ave., in Chicago.
There is no humility in the name World`s Finest Chocolate. But the 50-year-old business has some legitimate claims. Illinois ranks first in the country in confection–or all candy–manufacturing. And World`s Finest reigns supreme as the largest maker of solid chocolate bars in Chicago. It is the leading manufacturer nationwide of chocolate bars sold for fundraising.
And affable, 90-year-old Ed Oppler Sr. still is in charge.
”Mr. Wonka was standing all alone just inside the open gates of the factory. And what an extraordinary little man he was! He had a black top hat on his head. He wore a tail coat made of a beautiful plum-colored velvet . . . And his eyes–his eyes were most marvelously bright.”
Oppler rises from behind his desk at World`s Finest Chocolate. And what a figure he is, straighter–and with more hair–than many a man half his age. His well-fitted blue suit, white shirt and regulation tie are impeccable and appropriate for the chairman of a serious business. And his eyes, twinkly blue and clear, reveal his lifelong fascination even before he talks.
”This is a fun job,” Ed offers without prompting. ”Everyone loves chocolate.”
Ed started in the business at age 13, delivering chocolate in a horse and buggy to small stores in New York City. In 1922 he founded a firm that became World`s Finest Chocolate. ”Until January, I worked from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. every weekday,” he says. ”I got pneumonia in January, so I cut back to 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. I don`t feel too guilty.”
While Willy Wonka delights in giving away mugs of hot chocolate from his flowing chocolate river, Ed is warmed not only by a company that made $80 million last year in annual sales but makes it primarily by producing 2 1/4-ounce candy bars for fundraising. Church groups, children`s athletic teams and schools buy each bar for about 50 cents to sell it for $1, keeping 50 cents profit for their group.
Often a supermarket such as Dominick`s Finer Foods will join in with a fundraising group. A shopper buys a chocolate bar for $1, then uses the wrapper to get $1 off at the grocery if he spends at least $25 at the store.
”And it`s hard to go to Dominick`s and not spend $25,” Oppler adds.
World`s Finest Chocolate factory sits in the middle of a solid, middle class South Side neighborhood. At the main entrance, visitors are greeted with samples of smooth, sweet milk chocolate. The taste is not as aristocratic as the deep, bittersweet chocolate identified with Belgium or Switzerland. But the lingering, creamy texture hints at expensive cocoa butter and immediately sets it above many name-brand but lesser quality milk chocolate bars. It is shaped into a simple ingot-shaped bar, not fancy sea shells or golf balls. It is applaudable, affordable, off-the-rack goodness.
But we get ahead of ourselves, for the story of chocolate bars starts in the back of the chocolate factory where cocoa beans arrive.
”They passed a yellow door on which it said:
STORE-ROOM NUMBER 77–ALL THE BEANS, COCOA BEANS, COFFEE BEANS, JELLY BEANS, AND HAS BEANS.”
Cocoa beans get only brief–and irreverent–treatment in the Willy Wonka tale. At World`s Finest Chocolate, they get Ed`s personal brand.
In the rear of this 11-acre complex, burlap bags bulging with dried whole beans are stamped ”U.V.,” for Union Vale. These beans, which eventually head into four 65-foot silos, hail from World`s Finest`s own Union Vale plantation on the island of St. Lucia in the West Indies.
”I`ve been concerned that not enough cocoa beans are being grown in the world,” Ed says. Many traditional bean producing countries in South America and Africa have unstable governments or are switching to other crops, he says. So Ed took matters into his own hand, bought an inactive cocoa bean estate on St. Lucia about 12 years ago and revived the cocoa growing industry on the island.
Only about 40,000 pounds of beans are produced annually on the estate.
”That`s nothing, nothing–a drop in the ocean” to add to the 4 million pounds used annually at World`s Finest Chocolate, Ed says with a shrug. He considers his West Indies estate more of an experiment, a model, of what can be done in other tropical locations.
The harvest of cocoa beans starts when 8-inch long pods are cut from the cocoa tree. The pods are cut open, and the lima bean-sized cocoa beans plus a white, sticky mass are removed. The beans are air-dried three to five days and packed in burlap bags to ship to factories.
Upon arrival, cocoa beans are cleaned to rid them of any insect infestation, then sorted by size so they will roast evenly.
In the bean roasting room at World`s Finest Chocolate, not a bean is visible. But from sterile, oversized ovens the wonderful smell of chocolate escapes.
Like coffee and nuts, cocoa beans need to be roasted to bring out their flavor. The shells, cracked by heat, are separated from the cocoa bean nut, or nibs. Then the nibs get ready for a rough ride.
”Below the waterfall (and this was the most astonishing sight of all), a whole mass of enormous glass pipes were dangling down into the river from somewhere high up in the ceiling! They were really enormous, those pipes. There must have been a dozen of them at least, and they were sucking up the brownish muddy water from the river and carrying it away to goodness knows where.”
While still warm, roasted cocoa nibs are ground inside grinding machines until they form a thick paste, called chocolate liquor. Chocolate liquor contains no alcohol, just pure chocolate. In the process, the nibs rush through huge orange, blue and tan pipes until at one end the chocolate liquor pours out like a warm chocolate waterfall, about three feet long and four feet wide.
If you take a nibble at this point, deep brown liquor is intensely chocolatey, but bitter and roughly textured. If you added more cocoa butter and sugar, you`d be on your way to a chocolate bar. But first some of the liquor must be sacrificed to produce extra cocoa butter.
In large hydraulic presses, chocolate liquor is compressed, then screened into two parts: cocoa butter (45 percent) and cake (55 percent), the remaining powdery-like substance.
When the cake is pulverized, it becomes cocoa powder, destined for snacks like instant hot chocolate drinks.
Cocoa butter remains solid at room temperature until it reaches about 92 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature of the human tongue. Sold to other industries, it may be used in body oils or to manufacture candy. When added back to chocolate liquor, it enriches the flavor and helps make smooth chocolate that melts easily in your mouth.
” `The waterfall is most important!` Mr. Wonka went on. `It mixes the chocolate! It churns it up! It pounds it and beats it! It makes it light and frothy! No other factory in the world mixes its chocolate by waterfall!”`
Chocolate factories, like other competitive industries, do tend to keep secrets. So perhaps in this world there is a place that mixes chocolate by waterfall.
But at World`s Finest Chocolate, this final step is done in 3,000-pound batches in a large metal mixer. Other ingredients such as granulated sugar, whole milk powder and extra cocoa butter are added to chocolate liquor to make milk chocolate. The process for bittersweet chocolate is similar, but less sugar is added and no milk.
The chocolate mixture is blended into a paste, then refined between large steel rollers. From here it moves to another machine that liquefies and blends or ”conches” the chocolate for 12 to 24 hours to produce a velvety texture. Inexpensive chocolate that has not been not conched will have a harsh flavor and texture. For the finest, usually imported, chocolates the mixture may be conched up to 72 hours.
After the chocolate is tempered–heated, cooled and reheated to exact temperatures–it is ready to be molded.
At this point, the chocolate is about ready to turn into a candy bar. At World`s Finest Chocolate, warm milk chocolate pours over a bed of almonds while the molding machine gently shakes away excess. The still moist, 2 1/4-ounce bars solidify as they cool to below 90 degrees.
For about 20 minutes, fresh candy bars will ride through machinery, cooling and preparing to be wrapped.
All that`s left after this is the final wrapping. World`s Finest Chocolate makes its own wrappings with personalized titles for each fundraising group. The paper-backed foil wrappers snap around the candy bars, an electronic light shoots a final inspection and a cardboard box folds around three rows of 10 candy bars, ready to go.
”In every room, something delicious and wonderful is being made . . . luminous lollies for eating in bed at night . . . stickjaw for talkative parents . . . invisible chocolate bars for eating in class . . . rainbow drops –suck them and you can spit in six different colors.”
The chocolate delights from Ed Oppler`s factory may not be as fanciful as Willy Wonka`s, but there still is room for creativity. The biggest personal gift was a 200-pound chocolate bar once ordered by the late Chicago real estate tycoon Arthur Rubloff. And, on a smaller scale, doting aunts and uncles can order a solid chunk of chocolate, the exact weight of a newborn, with the little chap`s name, length and weight handwritten on the label.
”People like to take pictures of the baby with the chocolate bar,” Ed chuckles.
But the job of chairman of the World`s Finest Chocolate Factory isn`t all fun. Ed`s next chore this day is to dash off a letter to syndicated columnist Andy Rooney.
Rooney wrote in one of his columns that ”just about every country has better chocolate than we (Americans) do.” And Ed is piping mad. Rooney just may need an invitation to slip behind the scenes of World`s Finest Chocolate. Wise ol` Ed Oppler and his chocolate factory will set him straight.
Tribune photo by Charles Osgood
Here are some of are favorite chocolate recipes.
Both the pears and chocolate baked Alaska recipes are from the
”showstoppers” chapter of ”Hershey`s Chocolate Treasury” cookbook by the Hershey Foods Corp. (Golden Press, $14.95).
PEARS AU CHOCOLATE
Four servings
Preparation time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Chilling time: 2 to 3 hours
4 fresh pears
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla
Nut filling (optional):
6 tablespoons finely chopped nuts
2 tablespoons confectioners` sugar
1 teaspoon milk
Chocolate sauce:
6 tablespoons water
6 tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup butter
1 1/3 cups semisweet chocolate mini chips
Sweetened whipped cream
1. Core pears from bottom but leave stems intact; peel. Slice piece off bottom to make a flat base. Combine sugar and water in medium saucepan; add pears. Cover. Simmer over low heat 10 to 20 minutes (depending on ripeness) or just until pears are soft. Remove from heat; add vanilla. Cool pears in syrup; chill.
2. To make nut filling, combine nuts, confectioners` sugar and milk in small bowl.
3. To make chocolate sauce, combine water, sugar and butter in small saucepan; bring to full boil. Remove from heat. Stir in chocolate chips. Stir until chocolate has completely melted; beat or whisk until smooth. Cool.
4. To serve, drain pears; spoon nut filling into cavities. Place pears on dessert plates. Pour or spoon chocolate sauce onto each pear. Garnish with whipped cream. Serve with extra sauce on the side.