Les petits soldats de bois [Thousands of small little wooden soldiers]

One of the good points of being an ingeneering student is to visit industrial food factories.
Today, i visited a fabulous ice cream factory in Carcasonne (an old fortified city an hour away from Toulouse): Boncolac [which may mean something like “great milk”, but i would be so sure about it].

We discovered how the cream, milk… were processed to make yummy ice creams.
It was very impressive to see all the machines working and the thousands of popsicles going out from them.

First we went outdoors to see how all the ingredients were brought in. Tons of barels containing fruit pulp…

Then we entered the most delicious room ever to be seen: the chocolate stocking room. Imagine 7 meters of chocolate all around you… What would you do? Seriously, i thought i was going to turn mad and steal a 25kg bag of extra bitter chocolate; but obsviously, i didn’t for the reasons you all know: i would have made too much chocolate goodies and wouldn’t have had any time left to go to school.

Now let me introduce you to the most exciting room: the one where the ice creams are made.
The first assemblage chain we discovered, was the one that makes vanilla and coffee ice cream cones. It was so funny to see how the machines fill the cone waffles. Very impressive too.

After that we were shown the fabrication process of caramel popsicles coated with a delicious shiny chocolate glaze.

We were also taken to the room where the ice cream tubs were filled and sealed. I especially loved the blackcurrant sorbet as it has a bright pink colour (i had prepared a nice animated gif on that stunning sorbet, but sadly you can’t upload animations on blogger!!!).

But i remain addicted to the vanilla sort; maybe the most luscious ice cream on earth.

We ended our visit with the vanilla popsicles and this may be my favourite part of all. I adore the small wooden stick holding the posicles and reckon they look like thousands of little soldiers, hence the subtitle.

Just a short note: thanx Sam for mentionning this post in the Food and Drink section of BlogHer. I was happily surprised and very touched.

Posted by fanny who loves to forget labeling posts