Original subtitles

So, Paddy, Christmas is upon us. Yes!

What's your favourite bit?

So many things, isn't there, really? Er...

Watching the kids getting excited about opening their presents. Yeah.

Oh, and of course, chocolates. Chocolates! Chocolates!

Yes, but not the coffee cream ones.

Oh, no, no - the devil takes many forms.

And when it comes to creating the most luxurious chocolates

in the world, one country is head and shoulders above the rest.

So, to find out how they're made,

we've come to the home of chocolate, Belgium.

To one of the biggest chocolate factories in Europe.

I'm Paddy McGuinness, the new sheriff on the factory floor.

The old saloon doors. Come on!

Before I got a job on the telly, I worked in a few factories...

Whoa!

..so I'll be running this place in no time.

Let's do it. But not with that.

Oh.

But I'm not the only one having all the fun.

Cherry's getting involved as well.

Ah! Oh!

You know it, Paddy.

I'm discovering the secrets...

It's snowing, and yet it's chocolate.

..of the perfect white chocolate.

And historian Ruth Goodman is in Belgium too,

in the city of Sint-Niklaas, searching for Santa Claus.

This is his bedroom?! His bedroom and his bed.

These production lines make a mind-blowing 4 million chocolates

every single day.

And we're going to find out exactly how they do it.

Welcome to Inside The Factory.

Ho, ho, ho!

This is the Guylian factory

in the very Christmassy sounding Sint-Niklaas in Belgium.

Here, 190 staff produce over 500 tonnes of chocolate

every single week.

They make all sorts of chocolate here,

from bars to caramel filled temptations.

And in the run-up to Christmas,

the factory works 24 hours a day to ensure the shops never run out.

Oh, thank goodness for that.

Today, I'm finding out how they make their original seashells box.

In here are 22 individual chocolates,

all filled with a creamy hazelnut centre

wrapped up in milk and white chocolate.

I can't believe I get paid to do this!

One of the most important ingredients for my chocolates

are hazelnuts.

They're used in the filling,

which they call praline around these parts.

And bang on cue is a delivery at the intake bay...

..where I'm meeting production manager Kevin Stevens.

Kevin. How are you, pal?

I'm fine. And you? Merry Christmas. Thank you.

Kevin Stevens? Yeah. That's correct.

Have you got a little bit of British ancestry in you?

It seems. Just a small part. Just a very small part.

Don't take this the wrong way, Kevin -

we've only just met - but show me your nuts.

Here are my nuts. Oh, look at this.

How many's on there? 13 tonnes of hazelnuts.

How many individual nuts is that?

Roughly 13 million.

And this is - we're getting really technical now... Yeah.

..so how many individual chocolates does that make?

Roughly 5 million. My word!

Why hazelnuts?

Because hazelnuts is a fine ingredient to make praline.

Praline is roasted hazelnuts with sugar, we add some chocolate,

and that's the filling we use inside our chocolates.

Oh, I know it well, Kevin. Trust me.

Let's get them off and get inside. Let's go.

And as the first load of hazelnuts leaves the lorry...

..it's time to start the clock on our chocolate seashells production.

In the run-up to Christmas, the factory gets through

five 13-tonne truckloads of nuts every week,

and they're all brought in here, to the warehouse.

Do you know, I never asked you outside, Kevin,

where are they actually from, these hazelnuts?

Actually, these come from Turkey.

80% of the worldwide shipped hazelnuts come from Turkey.

They have a Mediterranean climate.

Right. It's the best environment to grow hazelnuts.

Can we have a look at one?

Yeah, of course. Let's have a look.

Get in there, Kev.

Not playing games.

So what makes a good hazelnut, Kevin?

You have to have the right size and then...

Oh, now, what is the correct size?

Between 8mm and 11mm.

If it's bigger, then it's too fatty

and then you get a really wet praline. That's not what we want.

And when they're small and they're too dry,

and then you get the dry praline, and that's also not what we want.

Not too big, not too small. Correct.

No-one wants a small nut. KEVIN CHUCKLES

To test the moisture in the nuts,

300 are selected at random from each delivery.

For that, we have a hazelnut guillotine.

Wow, look at this.

Welcome to Inside The Factory,

where tonight we'll be chopping nuts in half.

Would you do the honour? Oh, ho!

Is it a strike or a push?

Just strike it down.

You ready? Yeah.

Get down there!

Look at that. Nice. Well done.

Tell you what!

Here we go.

Oh, beautiful chopped nuts.

Right, Kevin, what makes a good nut?

We look at it and we search for any mould.

Mould would mean that the moisture level is too high.

If we don't see any mould, then it's fine.

They have to be shiny white.

This hazelnut looks very, very healthy.

Can we try these? Yeah, of course.

OK, here we go.

They taste quite mild, you know, it's very subtle.

But later on, we will show you how we make them even better.

So once you've done this little test, Kev, then what?

Then it's time to fill up the silo.

Let's do it.

But not with that. Oh.

150 of these 50kg sacks are loaded into the silo.

Nut sack in place. What's next, Kevin?

For that, we use a safety knife.

Oh, fantastic.

Oh, glorious!

One down...

Come on, Paddy. Stand aside. Let's go to work.

Let's go to work.

All right, Scrooge!

Just 149 sacks to go.

I've found my calling in life.

I'm living the dream.

You can leave me and me nuts here for a bit!

Our chocolate factory is on the edge of the city of Sint-Niklaas...

..which sounds a bit like the jolly fella himself,

delivering kids' presents at Christmas.

But here in Belgium, it's all done rather differently.

Ruth is unwrapping a yuletide mystery.

Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas -

he has so very many names,

and you might think that you know the story,

but here, in this town in Belgium,

they have a quite convincing claim to their own origin story.

As well as the usual excitement on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning,

in Belgium, children await the arrival of another visitor,

called Sinterklaas, on the 5th of December.

He has a big red hat and cape, and a white bushy beard.

Children hope to meet him and make it into his good book.

Sound familiar?

To find out more, I'm meeting the Mayor of Sint-Niklaas,

Lieven Dehandschutter.

Hello. Hello!

Hello, welcome, welcome to Sinterklaas House.

So who exactly is Sinterklaas?

Sinterklaas is adored by children in the Low Countries.

But during the night on December the 5th,

he and his white horse, they ride on the roofs

and he drops presents and chocolate

and biscuits and marzipan through the chimney.

This is a rather grand Belgian equivalent of Santa's Grotto.

Yeah!

What do you think about these children, Sinterklaas?

Will they receive what they want

when they put their shoe in front of the fireplace?

In one condition...

It does feel familiar, but there are obvious differences.

Children leave out a shoe for Sinterklaas

and a carrot for his horse.

And why the 5th of December, not the 24th?

In search of the origins of Sinterklaas,

we're heading inside the Church of Sint-Niklaas,

which was founded in the 13th century

and gave rise to the city around it.

So who exactly is this, then?

Well, this is Saint Nicholas.

He was a real person who lived in Asia Minor - nowadays Turkey -

at the end of the third century.

This looks so much like the sort of robe

that a modern Sinterklaas does wear. It does, yes.

So what is the connection between Saint Nicholas and children?

The oldest legends concerning Saint Nicholas

say that there was a man who was very poor and had three children.

Saint Nicholas passed along the house,

and through an open window, he threw a purse with golden coins.

The purse landed into one of the shoes of the family... Oh!

..and the fact that now children put their shoe at the fireplace

is probably referring to what happened.

So it's all that tradition that we still have of gifts to young people.

So when was it that Saint Nicholas died?

Well, the exact year is not known,

but we know the day, that was on December the 6th,

and that is why we celebrate Saint Nicholas on December the 6th.

Of course.

Nicholas was made a saint, and his saint's day was celebrated

every 6th of December across much of Catholic Europe.

And on the eve of this date, legend has it that he visits homes

on his white horse, leaving gold coins and gifts for children.

But how does this relate to the Santa Claus we know today?

We've returned to the House of Sinterklaas to find out.

This is his bedroom?! His bedroom and his bed.

Shall we take a pew? Yeah, yeah.

So, is Santa Claus an American thing?

Yes and no.

Dutch and Belgian immigrants,

they took their traditions to the New World.

But gradually, things started to change.

For instance, you have this picture, this is 1821,

and the white horse of Sinterklaas

is replaced by a reindeer and sleigh.

Those American traditions were imported in Europe.

So Sinterklaas goes out to the Americas and Santa Claus comes back.

Comes back, yeah. RUTH LAUGHS

And by the late 19th century,

the UK had also adopted the American-style Santa.

But here in Belgium, they hold on to their older traditions too.

But in the Low Countries, we still have Sinterklaas

and also Santa Claus. So Belgian children are lucky.

They get two bites of the cherry. Yeah, yeah.

December the 6th and December the 25th.

Correct, yeah.

CHILDREN SING

All my Christmases are coming at once too.

Me and Kevin have emptied 7,500 kilos of hazelnuts,

and we're following them into the intriguingly named Kettle Room.

I wish you folks at home could smell this place.

Well, Paddy, this is the heart of the company.

Wow. Now, this is proper old school, Kevin.

This reminds me of, like, something out of Willy Wonka.

The smell's gorgeous.

Like a sweet, nutty, sugary smell.

They've been using these copper kettles for nearly 40 years.

And it's here they roast the hazelnuts with sugar.

There's an empty one here. How do you get it all in there, Kevin?

Well, on top of you, you see a weigh bunker.

It fills with the right amount of hazelnuts and sugar

before we pour it into the copper kettle.

Right, time to mix my nuts with some of the sweet stuff.

Let's bring in Manuel and he will show it to us. All right, yeah.

Manuel!

How are you, Manuel? Nice to meet you, pal. Nice to meet you.

This fantastic contraption, like a telescopic chute,

can be moved to reach six of the kettles.

So how do the nuts come down here, Manuel, how do they get in?

Just press the green button. Green button? Yes.

Go and get a cup of tea. Leave this to me.

You go and relax, I've got this. OK!

Are you ready?

Whoa!

A perfect torrent of hazelnuts and refined white sugar.

Nailed it.

My word.

Oh, that's a lovely sweet smell as well, that.

Whoo!

Right, so they're in there now.

How did we get it cooking?

But first we have to remove the arm.

Move this?

Manuel! Break's over, Manuel!

Back in, pal.

So what happens now is we cook the hazelnut at 130, 140 degrees

in a copper kettle, because copper is a great heat conductor.

But what's actually happening in there?

Actually, there's two things happening.

The first thing is the hazelnuts get roasted,

all different kinds of flavours come out of the hazelnuts.

Like when you bake a steak at home,

all different kinds of flavours come out of the steak. Yeah.

The same thing happens when you roast the hazelnuts.

And the second thing that happens is the caramelisation of the sugar,

which made the praline a little bit more sweet.

And it has a fine, sweet taste.

Caramelisation is when the sucrose in the grainy sugar

breaks down, producing a thick, sweet paste.

And obviously spinning it as well to give it a nice, even coat.

Yeah, of course. You want to have the sugar caramelised

around all the hazelnuts.

The mixture needs to cook for 20 minutes,

so Kev and I head downstairs to wait for it.

So, Paddy, now we're actually below the copper kettles.

I can hear something rattling about up there, Kev.

The sugary hazelnuts, which these kettles churn out

at a rate of 936 kilos an hour, are finally ready.

They're pouring down the mixture now.

So in a minute we're going to see the mixture on the steel belt.

So these are the caramelised nuts coming down. Yeah, that's right.

Right, OK.

Here we go!

Oh, here they are!

Look at them! Wow, the heat!

Be careful, because it's really, really hot. Whoo!

That's 140 degrees, so it's very, very hot.

I bet they taste absolutely delicious.

Yeah, but I wouldn't taste them from the belt.

I got some for you, if you want to taste.

Be careful. They're still hot.

Oh, look at that.

Caramelised nuts, nice and warm.

Oh, yeah. Is it better than the raw hazelnut?

I know they're sweeter, obviously.

But the nut's a lot stronger than when it first came in.

But a little bit chunky.

I don't think they're going to work in the actual seashells.

Ah, but from here, they go into the mincer.

Can we see that? Yeah, of course.

All right, go on. Lead on, Kevin.

Right, go. Go.

Nothing better than hot sugary nuts for Christmas.

And Cherry's getting into the festive mood too.

Ah, lovely baubles.

The lights, the smell, the sparkle.

I love Christmas at home.

Decorating the tree is actually my favourite bit of Christmas,

but no matter how hard I try,

the decorations and the lights always end up looking a bit rubbish.

I'm not quite sure what I'm doing wrong.

The man who believes he has the answer

is mathematician Bobby Seagull.

Bobby! Merry Christmas!

I have a problem. Oh? Come in.

Remarkably, Bobby uses mathematical theories

to craft Christmas tree perfection -

something I clearly haven't mastered yet.

Ta-da!

Oh, my... Oh, no.

Is there anything that's really standing out as not working?

This tinsel here, it's just a nightmare.

The baubles, there's not enough of them.

And then the lights, just, like, what's going on?

I'm convinced the mathematics behind aesthetics and decoration

can help change this. And to be honest, everything's got to go.

We stripped my tree right back to create a blank canvas...

Ooh! Whoa.

Right.

..ready for the glitziest makeover you could imagine.

So, here in the Las Vegas Bellagio Casino, a 13-metre tall tree,

they've looked at the sort of ratios between the lights to the branches

and the baubles to the branches,

and we can apply that to this tree as well.

Are we going to do a Las Vegas Christmas?

Yes, we are, but we're going to need maths to help us work out

the surface area to help scale it to your tree.

To calculate the surface area of my Vegas-inspired tree,

we first measure the slanted height.

That's the distance from the edge of the top branch

to the edge of the bottom branch.

OK, that's seven foot. And now the radius.

So right from the centre of the tree... Right from the centre...

2.5.

So the maths behind working out the surface area of the cone

is pi - 3.14 approximately...

Obviously. ..multiplied by the slanted height, seven,

multiplied by the radius... 2.5.

..which gives us approximately 55 square feet for your tree.

Yeah, that's about 55.

The Vegas tree has 18 lights per square foot.

18... And we multiply it by the 55 square foot on your tree

to give us...

990. That's a lot of lights, Bobby.

It's Las Vegas, baby! Las Vegas baby!

A little tip for you - keeping the lights on is actually helpful

because then you can see where you're placing them.

If you want the golden glow of a cosy fire,

choose lights with about 3,000 Kelvin -

the unit that measures colour temperature.

989,

990! Woohoo!

All right, baubles. How many?

So, this is where we look at the Bellagio tree,

and there were three baubles per square foot.

They did not hold back.

So we've got 55 square feet on our tree -

three baubles per square foot.

165. Maths genius. Woohoo!

OK, here we go.

Hold on to your reindeers!

What?! Got to apply some maths here. Right.

Because of the cone shape, there's more distributed at the bottom

and fewer at the top.

To figure out how to spread the baubles evenly,

Bobby recommends applying a fraction-based formula.

You need to distribute a half in the bottom third.

Half of the baubles. Yeah.

And a third in the middle third.

OK. And then a sixth in the top third.

And that's mathematically the right proportion?

Yes, to make sure that things are evenly distributed.

We already know that we need 165 baubles to cover the tree evenly.

So now we just need to multiply that number by our fractions...

..and sort the baubles accordingly ready for hanging.

Mathematically and aesthetically,

we gain pleasure from seeing things that are symmetrical,

so probably, we could place maybe the red ones on first... OK.

..evenly, and then the gold ones in between after.

Why do we like things that are symmetrical?

So I think it's something that we see in nature.

We can see the radial patterns of flowers,

or we think about the hexagonal shapes of honeycombs.

So symmetry really does appeal to us.

165.

Bobby Seagull, I do believe we finished decorating the tree.

Not quite. Of course!

I'm so sorry. I forgot the star. The key bit. Yes.

And optimally, mathematically,

you need something that's about 10% of the size of a tree.

So for my six-and-a-half-foot tree,

that's a glittery star of around eight inches.

I do think it is a vast improvement.

It's absolutely tree-mendous.

Maths has worked today.

Back at the factory,

we're two hours and 22 minutes into production

and my caramelised hazelnuts

have gone through a lethal-looking mincer,

creating a rough crumb called sugar nut paste,

which is then gently sprinkled onto a conveyor belt.

Come on, Kev, join in.

PADDY HUMS JINGLE BELLS

Nothing.

Here we go.

So, Paddy, what we see over here

is the sugar nut paste, which is 35 microns.

Forgive me, Kevin, I'm not sure what a micron is,

but can you compare that to something for me?

Well, to get it in perspective, a piece of paper is 100 microns.

Wow! It's really, really fine.

So the particle size of this crumb is three times thinner than paper.

Can I try some? Yeah, of course.

Any excuse to get me blue glove on.

That is amazing.

It's heaven, isn't it?

Get over here!

Get over here! Look at that.

That looks quite thick and claggy.

Pop it in your mouth...

Oh, wow.

I can't believe you have to add more stuff to that.

That's good enough for me.

What gets added to that, then?

Let's go find out.

Oh, Kev, come on! Now we're talking.

Whoo!

This delicious sugar paste travels a few short metres

into one of eight 950kg mixers.

Right, what have we got here, Kevin?

What happens here, the hazelnut sugar paste gets into the mixer

and through the pipes, we add some chocolate.

Oh, just gets better, this.

Can we look inside? Yeah, of course.

Have a look.

Oh, look at that.

That looks to me like the world's best cement mixer.

But this is no cement.

This silky liquid chocolate is mixed with my hazelnut sugar paste.

What kind of chocolate's that, Kevin?

That's milk chocolate, 21.5% cacao.

That's the same chocolate that we use to make our seashells.

So that is the kind of final mixture, so it's the...

it's the praline ground up and then milk chocolate added.

And I'm guessing that's going to take it to the next level again.

So how long is it staying in here for, Kevin?

For 20 minutes.

While the nut paste and liquid milk chocolate blend together

to make my filling, I'm following my nose to the next stage.

Oh!

Now, that is a beautiful smell of chocolate, let me tell you.

That really hits you as soon as you walk in here.

What a bit of kit this is.

What's going on here, Kevin? This is our production line.

This is where we make the chocolate shells, with the white chocolate

and the milk chocolate, where the praline filling goes into.

I cannot believe how far this goes down there.

It's exactly 90 metres, Paddy.

The ingredients for my shells

are fed into this massive production line and moulded together

to make a whopping 2.2 million chocolates a day.

But that's just one line, Paddy.

But there's two lines, so double it.

So you're, like, over 4 million seashells every day?

Every day, within 24 hours.

That's a lot of shells.

And this beast needs feeding, so we better crack on with the next batch.

We've already made our praline filling,

which will form the centre of the chocolate.

Now we need to create the chocolate seashell casings

into which it will be pumped.

Now, I recognise these, Kevin.

I've seen them on the production line.

These are obviously the moulds.

In total, there's 2,600 moulds in one production line.

We have a bottom mould and we have a top mould.

These moulds will ultimately be joined together

to create a seashell sandwich, so to speak.

Each mould contains 11 different shell shapes

featuring a marbled effect of milk and white Fair Trade chocolate.

And in search of that snow-themed cocoa...

..is my mucker, Cherry - strong hairnet -

30km down the road at another factory

in the rural setting of Wieze, near Antwerp.

This, Paddy, is Barry Callebaut,

one of the biggest chocolate factories in the world.

They make over 300,000 tonnes of chocolate here every year.

Even I couldn't eat that much chocolate at Christmas.

Today I'm focusing on the white chocolate for Paddy's seashells,

but before I see how it's made,

I'm meeting Wim Van Wonterghem in the Chocolate Academy kitchen.

Wim, a very happy Christmas. Merry Christmas to you.

What exactly is white chocolate?

Well, white chocolate comes from the cocoa fruit.

Cocoa fruit, or pods, are grown in equatorial regions around the world.

The pods contain beans that are roasted to produce cocoa liquor,

which is pressed into cocoa butter and cocoa powder.

We get cocoa butter... That's cocoa butter.

..and we get cocoa powder. Cocoa powder.

And for white chocolate, we only need cocoa butter.

So is that why white chocolate isn't dark in colour? Yes.

Because you don't add the cocoa powder? Indeed.

I mean, it's got almost no flavour at all.

When you make white chocolate, you're not tasting cocoa butter.

You're tasting milk, you're tasting sweetness.

Cocoa butter may have little taste,

but it's vital for Belgian chocolate making.

In Britain, we often substitute it with cheaper vegetable oil,

but not here.

They use 150 tonnes of cocoa butter every week to make the magic happen.

There's all sorts going on in here. What is that?

We have milk powder, we have sugar and we have cocoa butter.

So this is like an enormous mixing bowl.

Yeah, it's 1,500kg.

After a five-minute churn,

the mix still contains large particles of sugar crystals...

There we are. Oh, look!

..so it's squeezed between giant rollers to start

the two-stage process of refining or crushing the lumpy particles.

And then it goes into the refiner.

Five more sets of rollers break down the mix even further

to create a fine powder.

CHERRY GASPS

Oh, it's a magical winter wonderland.

Except it's even better because it's made out of white chocolate.

Yeah, and it tastes better than snow.

It's snowing and yet it's chocolate.

Here it snows every day. It snows every day!

I mean, it's so fine now.

Yes, that is what you expect from Belgian chocolate.

You get that real smooth chocolate.

Oh, look, it's going up a ski lift.

The conveyor transports four tonnes of powdery mix every hour.

But we need velvety liquid chocolate,

and that requires a process called conching,

which reduces the tiny particles of sugar, milk powder,

and cocoa butter even further.

The conch heats and blends the mix,

which makes it silky and smooth and releases aromatic flavours.

Do you conch all chocolate, or is it specific to white?

No, we conch all chocolate.

The main difference is the temperature that you want to reach.

And is it higher or lower for white chocolate?

For white chocolate, it is lower.

The white chocolate conches for several hours.

So this is the final bit of the conching process.

Oh, look at that!

It's so much more liquidy.

What have you done to change the consistency of the chocolate?

We've added more cocoa butter.

And what has the cocoa butter done?

The cocoa butter has made it more liquid, more smooth.

Is that what makes Belgian chocolate really special?

It's the cocoa butter? It does for me, indeed.

I mean, that is a quality standard of all Belgian chocolate.

You use 100% of cocoa butter. No other fats.

Once conched, the chocolate flows through a large sieve

to remove any remaining lumps.

So, the final finished product, liquid chocolate.

Wim, I know what I'm asking Santa for this year -

a white chocolate Christmas waterfall.

The busy Barry Callebaut elves

produce four tonnes of white chocolate every hour.

And my batch of liquid white gold

is now ready to be sent to awaiting tankers.

I feel like this is the button to start Christmas. Yes.

Merry Christmas, everyone in the world!

Each week, seven tankers of white chocolate are dispatched

to Paddy's seashell factory,

along with another seven loads of milk and dark chocolate too.

Well, I hope Paddy's dreaming of a white Christmas.

Because he's surely going to get one. He really is.

I really hope you like my present, Paddy.

Love it, Cherry!

I always say you can never have too many 24-tonne tankers of chocolate

at Christmas.

Here at my factory, the seashell moulds I saw earlier

have had a splash of milk chocolate added to the bottom,

which will help create the outer marbled effect.

Now to create the casing for my praline centre,

it's time for Cherry's white chocolate.

Aah, the white chocolate!

Here we go.

Well, we have a silo over there where white chocolate

is getting pumped up through the pipes and to this depositor.

There's 44 nozzles in it that move up and down

and the chocolate flows by gravity into the moulds.

The white chocolate drops into the moulds

on top of the thinly-sprayed layer of solid milk chocolate.

But then it's flipped upside down.

Whoa! Hang on a minute.

Kev, we're losing it.

You're pouring it straight out!

That's normal, Paddy. That's normal.

The moulds are tipped for just the right amount of time

to ensure a two-millimetre thick coating of white chocolate remains.

And the excess isn't wasted,

as it's fed back to the start of the line to be used again.

From here, the moulds travel through a chiller for six minutes

to harden the chocolate.

Then the process is repeated on the empty rolls of the same moulds,

but in reverse.

A white chocolate splash followed by milk chocolate.

I hope you're keeping up.

Then the whole lot is cooled again

before 2,906 perfectly formed hollow shell halves emerge.

This, I suppose, Kevin, is where the magic happens.

We've got the shell.

They're all ready to go.

This is the praline, the filling.

That's correct. This is a big moment.

The hazelnut praline is pumped straight to the line

and into a fancy machine called a depositor.

Kevin, I've just got to say,

that, there, is crying out for a marshmallow.

I would love to put a marshmallow in that

and spend the day here just watching this process.

Unfortunately that's not possible, but I understand the idea.

PADDY LAUGHS

The chocolate-lined moulds for the bottom half of my chocolates

are now fed beneath the depositor head.

This is the magical moment.

This is where the praline meets the chocolate for the first time.

88 little taps gently release an average of 6.8g of praline...

..filling each and every half of the chocolate shells.

So, we've got the bottom of the shell and the top half of the shell

coming together for the first time in perfect harmony.

The top moulds and bottom moulds are then pressed together

to form a full shell sandwich.

I love that. A marriage made in heaven.

Inseparable.

The moulds then pass through a chiller

to guarantee that special bond between the two shell halves...

..and three hours and five minutes since the start of production,

it's time for the big Christmas moment.

Bring on the Buble.

a lot like Christmas

it's glistening once again

Oh, there they are!

Look at those, glistening away, there.

It's like being on a chocolaty beach.

I love that, married together, out they come.

RHYTHMIC TAPPING And what's that noise?

There's some of the shapes are very difficult

and they need a little bit of help.

So we knock on the top of the mould, get the seashells out of the mould.

The soft tip pneumatic hammers gently tap the chocolates

out of the top half of the moulds.

So, when you look on, Kevin,

you can see they're really intricate, the shapes.

And that's why they need a little bit of help.

Look at that. Beautiful.

Up to 20 million chocolate shells are de-moulded here every day

in the lead-up to Christmas,

which surely has to be worth celebrating, eh, Kev?

Well, Paddy, would you like to try a delicious chocolate seashell?

At last, Kevin.

All day I've been hinting at this.

And now you're saying... Well, I am ready, my friend.

Look at this.

Here we go.

Straight off the old production line.

I'm going to go for that shell there.

That's a good choice. Come here, come here.

Ah!

How does it taste?

It tastes even nicer now as I know the process that it's gone through,

how much hard work has gone into each individual shell.

It makes it taste so much sweeter.

Just try one more, just in case.

Yeah...still good.

You can try them all if you want.

I will.

I really like Kevin.

So while I fill me boots, take a look at Ruth,

who's been investigating the history of this very Belgian treat.

Belgium is full of beautiful little chocolate shops,

carrying on a long tradition of handmade praline.

The first is said to have been made in 1912

by chocolatier Jean Neuhaus,

who sold them from this shop

in the glittering Queen's Gallery in Brussels.

So could you give me a praline?

I'll give you our signature chocolate, called a Caprice. OK.

It's a shell made of salted caramel and hazelnut, we call nougatine,

filled with fresh cream vanilla.

Now, that is good.

But to find out how Belgian chocolate became world-famous,

I've travelled to Antwerp,

27km from Paddy's factory.

Inside the fabulous Chocolate Nation Museum, I'm meeting Ben Roelants.

Hello!

Ruth, hi.

So how is it that Belgian chocolate goes, well, big?

There was one game-changer.

This man revolutionised the making of chocolate.

His name is Octaaf Callebaut.

Callebaut. Is that the same or related in any way to the Callebaut

who is producing the chocolate for Paddy's factory?

So, yes, he is. And actually he came from a family of brewers,

and he found a way to transport not cocoa powder, but liquid chocolate.

This was 1925 when he revolutionised this way of making chocolate.

And soon, the factory they had in a little village called Wieze

grew and grew and grew and grew. That's a big factory.

What Callebaut did was he helped the chocolatiers,

because now they didn't have to go through the laborious process

of making their own chocolate, from bean to chocolate.

So this chocolate in a liquid form

goes out to lots of little factories... Exactly.

..who are doing all the pretty stuff. There you go.

Because from then on, chocolatiers could focus, really,

on the filling of the pralines, for instance,

or the different architectural beauties they could make

with this chocolate, rather than having to go through

the laborious process of changing cocoa beans into chocolate.

And it puts Belgium on the forefront of the chocolate revolution,

if I might say so. BOTH CHUCKLE

This innovation was showcased at the 1958 World Fair in Brussels,

launching the reputation of the finest Belgian chocolates

across the globe, and sales boomed...

..with exports of 70,000 tonnes of chocolate in 1965

to more than half a million tonnes today.

So what is it about chocolate that makes it Belgian chocolate?

Well, we can narrow it down to the percentages,

because Belgian chocolate has to contain at least 30%

of cocoa powder... Mm-hm.

..and there's only cocoa butter and no added vegetable fats.

That's the secret. So this is a particularly chocolaty chocolate.

BOTH LAUGH

Well, it's a lot more chocolaty than it is where you're from,

for instance, because in Great Britain, you can call it chocolate

as from 20% of cocoa, where we have to go 10% higher.

And of course, it has to be made in Belgium.

Ah, of course. I mean, Ruth, you would like to try one?

This looks good!

Rich taste. Mm-hm.

This smooth texture when it just slides on your tongue.

Yeah. Belgian.

LAUGHTER

I think she enjoyed that.

I've been doing my own share of chocolate tasting.

And look at these beauties.

My marbled shells have been dropped into blister packs

and I'm following them to packaging.

Oh, love this, the old saloon doors.

Come on!

Sorry, I forgot you have to come through.

Get in. Get in, get in.

Wow, this is massive.

Somewhere in this 4,600 square metre warehouse

is operations manager Paul Bevers.

Paul, how are you, sir? Hello.

Hello. Merry Christmas to you. Hello, Paddy.

Thank you very much. Merry Christmas. Thank you very much.

So, what's this room, Paul?

Well, we are here in the packaging area of our factory.

The smell is just... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. ..gorgeous.

We love chocolate's smell, and we always have that in the factory.

My packs of chocolate shells

are streaming along from the production line...

..marching four abreast like little intergalactic soldiers...

..towards four enormous robots.

First, they fold flat pieces of card into boxes...

..before gently plucking up the blister packs

and dropping them into position.

Now that's some serious multi-tasking.

At last.

You know, when I see them going in, I think, "Merry Christmas."

Yeah! Merry Christmas.

Nice to see. 80 trays per minute.

How many individual chocolates is that, then?

Well, we are up to 1,760 of our original seashells each minute.

1,760 seashells... Yeah, yeah. ..each minute.

Each minute. Wow.

But we have a second line, so it's actually double that amount.

So you're round about 3,500, a bit more than.

3,500 per minute on the two lines, absolutely.

Oh, that's a lot! Yeah.

Which - now this is a coincidence -

that's how many I get through a minute on Christmas.

OK! One, whoa, whoa, whoa...

In fact, I probably get more than that.

Now, we've all got that one relative

who prefers something savoury at Christmas.

So Cherry's sniffing out a festive cheese board favourite.

I'm at a factory in the heart of the Leicestershire countryside,

one of the world's biggest producers of Stilton.

There are people who don't take kindly to this smelly,

blue-veined cheese, but...

..I personally am a big fan, so this should be cheese heaven.

Long Clawson Dairy has been a farmer-owned cooperative

for more than 100 years.

Today, milk is arriving from one of 41 local member farms.

And to reveal the alchemy behind Stilton's classic blue veining,

I'm meeting master cheesemaker, Steve Smith.

Merry Christmas, Steve. Merry Christmas.

How do we turn that huge bathtub of milk into cheese?

So we have to have three ingredients,

the first of which is our friendly bacteria called starter culture.

So this culture starts the fermentation process.

We need to distribute that evenly throughout that huge vat,

so what we do is we place it into a bucket of milk.

All right, friendly bacteria - it's party time.

Starter culture is added to most types of cheese.

Whee!

The bacteria converts lactose in the milk into lactic acid,

and this slow acidification is crucial for cheese flavour.

So next we have to add the blue mould.

And so is that a live ingredient?

It is, yeah, and it's responsible for that lovely blue veining

and appearance that we get later on

as well as a unique flavour and taste.

This is what makes Stilton a classic blue cheese -

penicillium roqueforti - a natural fungus once found on cheese

left in caves, today it's made by specialist manufacturers.

Merry Christmas, magic mould.

Transform this enormous tub of milk into Stilton.

Woohoo!

Next, Steve adds a vegetarian coagulation enzyme,

causing the milk to clot into a semi-solid in just one hour.

Oh, that's so weird, it's like a blancmange or a mousse.

A machine then cuts it into chunks called curd,

and the liquid whey is drained off

and used to make products like protein shakes.

Salt is added to the fresh curd,

reducing the formation of unwanted bacteria

and delivering a strong hit of flavour.

What does this taste like? Very acidic and very salty at this point.

So it's not really blue cheese yet.

Way off yet.

The blue mould hasn't yet had the time or conditions to grow.

First, the curd must be broken down to mix in the salt.

Stilton is a protected regional food,

which means it must be made in Derbyshire, Leicestershire

or Nottinghamshire.

It also has key protected characteristics.

So it has to be made in a round cylindrical hoop.

Traditionally formed in wooden buckets called hoops,

here milled curd is placed into plastic cylinders.

So if it's square, it's not Stilton.

It's not Stilton if it's square. It has to be round.

So many rules to making Stilton!

Nearly... 10.5...

There we go. Yeah, got it! Well done. Brilliant. Woohoo.

Do I give it a really big press now?

No, we don't press Stilton. That's one of our other rules.

It has to be naturally settling.

We don't want to have the texture too compact.

We want to leave lots of gaps and crevices

for that blue mould to grow later on in the process.

To maintain these gaps, the filled hoops are turned

to allow the liquid to drain away

whilst the cheese slowly forms evenly inside.

They're rotated here several times for one week

before being removed from the hoops and turned by hand.

Then they're sent to the maturing room.

Steve, they look so different.

Look, they've already got a lot of...

A kind of mouldy covering on them.

Yeah, so that's referred to as our crust.

How old are these now?

These are now coming up to nearly four weeks of age.

So what does it look like inside?

Very pale.

The crust has kept the blue mould inside dormant.

We need to pierce the cheese to allow the oxygen in,

which stimulates the blue mould growth.

Each wheel of Stilton is pierced with hundreds of holes.

This process is only done at four weeks

to prevent the blue mould penetrating the cheese too quickly.

But now, exposed to the air, it spreads through the crevices,

developing yeasty, sweet flavours with a salty, nutty aftertaste.

The process of this mouldy magic is checked two weeks later -

a total of six weeks since the cheese was made.

So you've got to push the grading iron

into the centre of the cheese. Mm-hm.

Quite tough. Eeh!

Spin it round and then remove it.

Oh, much bluer. Look at that.

That's exactly what we're looking for.

Looking for the blue veining to start from the centre of the cheese,

all the way out to the exterior crust, with a nice open texture.

Do you think that's ready to eat?

At least another three weeks. Oh, really?

It's not quite broken down enough to give it that nice creamy,

savoury texture.

OK, so this needs to go back to bed.

It takes up to 14 weeks to be ready for the Christmas dinner table.

Oh, look at that!

That is absolutely beautiful blue marbling.

That's because the mould's travelled down all those gaps and crevices.

It's absolutely everywhere. Is that a good looking Stilton?

That's a great looking Stilton, and every Stilton is unique.

So when you get a Stilton at Christmas,

that is your unique individual Stilton.

That's right. So it's quite special. Very special.

That is the best Christmas present ever.

You can keep your cheese, Cherry - I am all about the chocolate.

At the factory, my seashells are spiralling onwards...

..to be packed and stacked, 120 at a time, onto pallets.

And Paul and I are following them to the warehouse.

You're all set for Christmas, Paul.

We are all set, Paddy. We have all the chocolates all made.

Chocolates made, presents wrapped.

I propose, Paddy, we go now,

see in the warehouse where we load our product to the consumers.

And let's take the bikes.

It's the way our technicians move around the factory

to be a little bit faster.

I like this. Yes, it's nice.

Why has no-one thought of this before?

Love this.

What horsepower is this, Paul? Huh? Never mind.

Let's go. Yes, please follow me, Paddy.

This is what it's all about.

I always wanted a bike for Christmas,

but getting to ride one around a chocolate factory...

Wahey!

..the six-year-old me would have never have dared to dream.

We're burning off all those chocolates we've eaten.

It's just as well we've got the bikes.

This site covers an area of 27,000 square metres.

Aha, loaded them up.

And it looks like I've arrived just in time

to put the last pallet on the wagon.

Here we go.

I do some of my best work at Christmas.

40% of the chocolate shells made here every year for the UK

are sold over Christmas.

Oh... Yes. There she goes.

There she goes.

She's on. Nicely done, Paddy.

So how many are on that wagon, Paul?

33 pallets, or about 47,500 boxes of chocolates.

And how many's that work out individually, do you know?

That's about 1 million seashells. 1 million seashells!

Yeah, on each lorry.

And how many of them leave a day?

We are at our busiest period of the year at Christmas,

we have about 20 lorries per week leaving the factory.

So that's effectively 20 million individual chocolates leave,

all for everyone to get stuck in at Christmas.

Absolutely, yeah. I love that.

How do you say, in Belgium, how do you say Merry Christmas?

Gelukkig Kerstmis.

Merry Christmas!

Four hours and 25 minutes since I saw raw hazelnuts being delivered,

my chocolate seashells are leaving the factory.

From this small town in Belgium,

they travel to 120 countries across the globe,

including North America, China and Australia.

But of course, it's us Brits who munch the most,

putting away a whopping 44.7 million chocolate shells at Christmas.

Well, what a treat that was.

And I'm sure you'll agree, nothing says Christmas like seashells,

copper kettles and a sack of nuts.

Merry Christmas, everyone.