Ferrero Rocher
Ferrero Rocher is a brand of chocolate and hazelnut confection manufactured by the Italian company Ferrero. Created by Michele Ferrero in 1979, each Ferrero Rocher ball is covered in foil and placed into a paper liner. The confection is machine-made and much of its production process is kept secret. It is sold worldwide and it is particularly associated with Christmas.
History
Ferrero Rocher was introduced in 1979 in Italy and in other parts of Europe in 1982. Michele Ferrero, the credited inventor, named the chocolate after a grotto in the Roman Catholic shrine of Lourdes,. Rocher comes from French and means 'rock' or 'boulder'.Ingredients
The chocolate consists of a whole roasted hazelnut encased in a thin wafer shell filled with hazelnut chocolate and covered in milk chocolate and chopped hazelnuts. Its ingredients are milk chocolate, sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, skim milk powder, butteroil, lecithin as emulsifier, vanillin, hazelnuts, palm oil, wheat flour, whey, low fat cocoa powder, sodium bicarbonate, and salt.Production
The production process is a secret, and no smartphones or notebooks are allowed inside the production facilities. As of 2015, few journalists have ever been invited to visit. As of 2015, the production in the Alba factory totals 24 million Ferrero Rochers a day.The mechanised production process begins with flat sheets of wafer with hemispheres moving down an assembly line. The hemispheres of the wafers are then filled with a chocolate hazelnut cream. Next, two of these wafer sheets—one with a hazelnut and one with hazelnut chocolate creme—are clamped together. The excess wafer is cut away, producing wafer balls. These are then coated with a layer of chocolate, a layer of chopped hazelnuts, and a final layer of milk chocolate before the chocolate ball is wrapped in gold-coloured foil.