About
What are maltesers?Little milk chocolate balls with crisp light honeycombed/malt centres. Or in other words: pure heaven.
How are they made and by who?
Apparently how they're exactly made is a trade secret, but that doesn't stop people from wondering. The best explanation that I've found would be the following:
Maltesers are made in two stages. The inner crunchy part is made of a mixture of malted milk (yes, Horlicks), skimmed milk powder, and salt. Once mixed they are made into little pellets. These pellets are then cooked in a vacuum oven which gives them their "honeycomb" texture (the low pressure cooking forces the bubbles in the mixture to expand, making the pellets larger). The now expanded pellets are then coated with chocolate. This is done by atomising the chocolate and spraying it onto the honeycomb as the balls blow through a vortex of air. Each little droplet of chocolate dries almost immediately so you get the even coating.
And it's Mars who makes them. Which isn't much of a secret. If you'd like to read more theories, then this link should be of some interest to you.
When were they first made?
Maltesers were first on sale in 1936.
What kinds are there?
I thought you'd never ask :D Well, for a long time there were just the classic maltesers, lovely milky chocolate, and then the White Chocolate maltesers showed up as a Christmas special - and never left. I love the classic, but the white chocolate maltesers are really very yummy too. Then there's also a Maltesers drink and ice-cream, but neither have really grabbed my attention.