Dino Jimmy

Several days ago I posted about my long quest for an explanation of how ice cream sprinkles are made. I truly have wondered about this for years and have asked friends, bartenders - anyone with a mind - how sprinkles are made, but never stumbled upon a plausible answer. It is the one thing that has stumped me regardless of the abundance of possible processes.

Well, my friends, I have fantastic news. I shared my sprinkle puzzlement (is that a word?) with my friend, Ben. Fortunately for me, it bothered him just as much as it bothered myself (ah, the comfort of shared misery..). He promptly called the American Sprinkle Company and inquired about their magical machines. Alas they would not even offer a hint, mentioning that it was a 'trade secret', blah blah.

How rude.

That night Ben emailed a local radio station and the next day his question was thrown out to the thoughtful people of Portland, Oregon. Apparently we both had missed a very important episode of 'How It's Made', but two radio listeners called in and revealed the mystery. I must admit that it's still not crystal clear in my mind, but here's my best shot:

First, their sugar recipe is mixed together and when it's deemed ready, it's put through a machine that acts kind of like a play-doh press or a pasta maker. The mixture gets pushed through a contraption with ity-bity holes and then they're chopped off when they're of the right length. Now! Here's the part I was missing all along.. Since this mixture isn't quite hard like cookie dough, and not quite soft enough to fall apart, its middle ground consistency allows the ends to pull in and round off after the piece has been chopped into a cylinder. It's closer to a liquid than I had imagined all these years. So there really is nothing actively rounding the ends - they just naturally behave that way after breaking off. Moments later, they are cooled and subsequently harden. Their food coloring is coated or sprayed on only after they've been formed. (This sounded counterintuitive to me - why wouldn't you just make a batch of red, a batch of yellow, etc. Right? Why not add the food coloring when you're mixing the batter? Meh. Whatevs, obviously they know what they're doing.)

And now I'm free! I can start living my life now that I finally got that nagging sprinkle thing settled! (Thanks Ben! And thanks Portland; I wasn't sure someone would actually take time out of their commute to explain the sprinkle-making process to us.)

But then... how do they make dinosaur sprinkles........ ??

Back to the drawing board.

No wait! maybe instead of pressing the sugar concoction through a round hole they just shape the hole into a little dino, press it through, chop it off and presto! Right?! Does that work? Will I ever be free?