Enrober
An enrober is a machine used in the confectionery industry to coat a food item with a coating medium, typically chocolate. Foods that are coated by enrobers include nuts, ice cream, toffee, biscuits and cookies. Enrobing is essentially a mechanized alternative to hand-dipping. Enrobing with chocolate extends a confection's shelf life.[1]
History
Coating a confection in chocolate was traditionally a slow manual process involving dipping the pieces into melted chocolate by hand. As demand for chocolate-coated sweets grew, it became impractical or impossible to employ enough people to dip sweets into melted chocolate to keep up with required production capacity.[2] To fulfill this need for high-capacity chocolate coating, the enrober machine was invented in France in 1903,[3] brought to the United States, and perfected to perform the work of at least twenty people.[2]
Process
The process of enrobing involves placing the items on the enrober's feed band, which may consist of a wire mesh or containers in which the confection to be enrobed are placed, with each container having drain holes to recover excess chocolate. The enrober maintains the coating medium at a controlled constant temperature and pumps the medium into a flow pan. The medium flows from the flow pan in a continuous curtain and bottoming bed that the food items pass through, completely coating them. A wire mesh conveyor belt then transports the coated confection to a cooling area.[4]
See also
- Sugar panning, a related method to cover a candy or nut with a hard candy shell
- Couverture chocolate, a form of chocolate with a high proportion of cocoa butter, used in dipping and coating
- Compound chocolate, a chocolate substitute made from cocoa solids and various vegetable fats, often used by enrobers
- Food coating
