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Top sweets recipe patents

TWIX, MARS and SKITTLES

I thought this would never happen! I've just been put off TWIX.

In 1995 MARS Inc. patented:

"Coating an edible material with a continuous inorganic coating, wherein the coating has a thickness ranging from 0.0001 to 0.5 microns"

… to provide a barrier to migration of moisture, oxygen and fat.

The coating is:

Silica (normally used to make cement),
Magnesium oxide (normally a principal fireproofing ingredient in construction materials),
Quicklime (normally used in the steelmaking process),
Titania (normally used as a pigment in paint and varnish),
Zinc oxide (normally used to make rubber and sunblock), or
Manganese oxide (normally used in fertiliser).

Mars considerately applied this coating to:

SKITTLES,
my favourite chocolate: TWIX (which normally suffers from water migration from the caramel to the cookie),
M&Ms (which bleed colour in a humid environment), and
MARS' cereals (… which tend to lose the crunch in milk!),

thereby extending their shelf life and preserving the "crunch".

Patent: US5741505

Peanut butter for chocolates

Kellogg tried to patent this PEANUT BUTTER recipe:

65‐85% nut butter

0.15‐0.5% emulsifier

5‐30% sugar alcohol (e.g. sorbitol)

1‐5% triglyceride‐based stabiliser

1‐5% food starch

Apparently, the "clever bit" is the sugar alcohol, which prevents the peanut butter oils from "migrating" into the chocolate covering of the Kellogg Special K Bars.

I assumed Special K bars didn't taste so good because they were "diet" bars. I'm now thinking: maybe it's the sorbitol.

Patent: WO2008042836

Chocolate

Food patents can be surprisingly simple. But, few are as exceptional as US patent no. 2999017 granted to Unilever for a "process for making chocolate":

Grinding and heating cocoa beans into a cocoa mass
Mixing dextrose hydrate with the cocoa mass at a temperature of 35‐45C

This short patent gave Unilever a 20 year monopoly over substituting glucose with a sugar derived from corn starch ‐ a sweetener that's considered an obvious alternative today. One small problem: it doesn't taste as good!

Flake chocolate

Cadbury's patent for a FLAKE covers a confectionery comprising:

a convoluted chocolate sheet made up of fold lines defining cavities filled with a filling material; and

a planar region of weakness extending along the full width of the chocolate sheet.

In English: "a Flake chocolate with break‐lines"!

Kind of like a Kit‐Kat, but not quite. What boggles me is that Cadbury's considered it necessary to include 12 pictures properly to explain this technological milestone ‐ each worth 994 superfluous words.

Patent: US8974850 (granted 2015)

Peanut bar

Pearson's Candy Company patented the method of making its famous SALTED NUT ROLL:

Deposit nuts on a continuously moving granular first layer
Cover the nuts with an extruded viscous sticky second layer (e.g. caramel)
Extrude nougat center pieces
Roll the layers to encase the nougat center pieces
Cut the rolled layers intermediate the nougat center pieces

55 years on … and Pearson's remains the King of Salted Nut Rolls.

Patent: US3156195

Chocolate cigarettes

Let's be honest: we LOVED these, but would be appalled to see our children playing with them:

CHOCOLATE CIGARETTES

Here's the patented method of making them:

"Injecting chocolate into a helical paper wrapping tube."

Well, what more did you expect?

Patent: DE1055338

Lollipop

This inventor identified a serious mortal threat posed by LOLLIPOPS:

"Numerous incidents have been reported of children being seriously injured, sometimes fatally, through falling down with a conventional lollipop in their mouths. Accordingly, the major object of the invention is to provide a lollipop that is attractive to children and which does not embody any sharp sticks and is therefore absolutely safe for children to hold in their mouth while at play."

His patented solution:

"A candy lollipop having a body sized to be enveloped by the lips and a thumb‐receiving recess with a lining."

A clear front‐runner for President of UNICEF!

Patent: US2190231

Lollipop whistle

LOLLIPOP WHISTLES! We all loved them, but this one would've made you King of the Playground ‐ a patented WHISTLE POP with slidable stick for varying the pitch! Genius!

Patent: US2417480

Efrutti mini‐food sweets

This is how Efrutti patented its mini‐burgers and mini hot dogs:

" A disc or rod‐shaped fruit gum layer sandwiched between domed porous foamed sugar layers."

Wonder if McDonald's patented its "disc‐shaped meat layer sandwiched between dome‐shaped buns"?

Patent: EP0349841

Efrutti designs

In addition to patenting its Efrutti hot dogs and hamburgers, Mederer design registers all its delicious jujubes ...

Sweet in the shape of a sports bat

For all the Baseball lovers out there: Patented candy or ice cream in the form of a baseball bat …

The patent covers:

a handle with a stem extending therefrom; and

an edible product (e.g. candy or ice cream): mounted on the stem; and abutting the handle,

wherein the outer radial surface of the edible product is aligned with the outer radial surface of the handle.

Patent: US1668524

Sucker

This has to be the best SUCKER ever!!

US2121185 patented a sucker made of:

hard candy with a cavity and outlet openings;

syrupy material within the cavity; and

a stick movable within the cavity to eject syrup from the outlets.

A syrup‐filled stick‐pumped sucker! Anyone keen to join me in the sucker business? This patent has expired!

Patent: US2121185

Roasted marshmallows

This one should've been a real crowd‐pleaser: A patented method of making CAMPFIRE MARSHMALLOWS (without the campfire):

Place marshmallows on a tray
Dehydrate the marshmallows to 80% of original weight at a temperature 35‐68C
Cool
Toast at a temperature 93‐288C
Cool
Flip
Toast
Cool
Dehydrate
Cool

But, they missed the most important thing: the hot, gooey centre. So disappointed! Definitely won't be making this for the kids this weekend ‐ reckon they'd rather opt for Brussel Sprouts.

Patent: US9867386