It’s not been a good week for healthy or even reasonable eating. My multi-helping Thanksgiving dinner was followed by a birthday dinner that consisted solely of red wine, red meat, and chocolate petit gateau. Topping the decadence of a rare filet wrapped in presunto is difficult but if you want to try, I suggest visiting a chocolate factory.
Today, we visited the Garoto Chocolate Factory, the fourth and final thing to do when visiting Vitoria. Garoto is the brand of chocolate here in Brazil and while technically owned by Nestle nowadays, Garoto chocolates are 100% Brazilian.
A factory whirring and buzzing away is one of the purest examples of human ingenuity. I was frequently hypnotized by the rhythmic filling and flipping of candy trays to the point I became completely unaware the guide was speaking. The production line is amazing. Each machine is perfectly timed, measured, programmed, and maintained. Here’s the process for one single candy, the famous (to anyone who has spent a month in Brazil) Serenata de Amor.
Serenatas are chocolate coated balls, with crispy wafer shells surrounding a hazel nut creme filling. They are the overwhelming favorite among Garotos candies.
First on the conveyor belt are the shells in long sheets. The shells arrive on the conveyor concave. They are flipped on a ferris wheel contraption before passing through a humidifier. They are rehydrated by 5% and I would love to know how long it took to determine 5% provided the optimum crunch.
After their trip through the sauna, the shells are filled. Tubes running across the ceiling, labeled “clear filling”, squirt the filling into each half shell before sending the sheets down the conveyor to be pressed together. The now complete balls, still together in sheets, roll through a refrigerator to cool the filling. Then they’re cut into individual balls of yumminess.
Finally, it’s time for the chocolate.
We followed the conveyor belt into another room and the smell alone was enough to satisfy any chocoholics craving for months. The shells pass first through a cascade of dark chocolate, are cooled and then are drenched in milk chocolate. They are sorted and distributed along the conveyor belt to four different wrapping machines. I have no idea how these machines work. Candy went in naked and came out with neatly twisted wrapper. It happened too fast for the human eye.
Just how fast? Depending on the setting, the machine can wrap between 850 to 1200 pieces in a minute. And there are four of these machines wrapping 24 hours a day. In a single day this factory produces 3.5 tons of Serenata de Amors.
Of course the tasting stations along the way were gluttonous and generous enough to put you off chocolate until Easter (which the factory is already producing for), but it was seeing the production, spinning and whirring, perfectly timed that I enjoyed the most. The engineering on display gives me faith in humanity. If we can build a sauna for 3.5 tons of candy, can a pill that increases your metabolism on holidays and candy factory visits be far off? That would be pretty sweet!
