Baking&Snack - April 2011 - 38

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▲ (Top) Cheesecake batter deposits automatically into the 9-in.-diameter pans on this line in Building 2. ▲ (Middle) Cubed into mini bites, sheets of cheesecake will be boxed and used as inclusions by further processors. ▲ (Bottom) Colossal cheesecakes, which weigh 108 oz and are nearly 4 in. tall, bake in deck ovens. BAKING & SNACK / April 2011

depositors, icing and filling equipment from Unifiller and Hinds-Bock, as well as a complete cake line. Mixing room operators use 11 140-qt vertical mixers to create a variety of batters. Generally, longer-tenured employees are assigned to the mixing room because that part of the process requires more knowledge, Mr. Lawler said. “Any variability in our process is in this room,” he added, watching employees batching ingredients and operating the mixers. Seven deck ovens bake products made at this plant, including both round and sheet cakes. On the day Baking & Snack visited the company in mid-January, employees were making layered carrot cakes, and one worker was prepping whole carrots to be shredded for the cakes. They also were assembling carrot cakes, injecting the cake layers with a caramel filling before the layers were iced and stacked on top of one another. In the cutting room, employees loaded White & Dark Chocolate Mousse Cakes that had been made the day before into six FoodTools cutting machines. After slicing, operators manually loaded the cakes into boxes, which were then date-coded. Next, the products went through a McLean X-ray system as well as Mettler-Toledo Safeline metal detectors before being stacked onto pallets. The company designed operations in Building 2 to be much more streamlined. Raw ingredient receiving is on the north side, and finished products ship out the south end. A similar layout was used when the bakery expanded three years ago. Building 2 sits on 21 acres, with a good-size pond on the front of the property. Two 100,000-lb-capacity sugar silos are located on the north side of the building. A service alley separates the older portion of the building from the expansion. This corridor runs the length of the facility and houses generators, chilling equipment and other support systems for both sections of the bakery. This plant was initially built to make cheesecakes, cheesecakes and more cheesecakes. The mixing room features 20 140-qt vertical mixers, and a Comas cheesecake line deposits the batter into pans that are automatically loaded onto trays and manually slid onto racks. The bakery makes many varieties and sizes of cheesecakes. It started with a standard 60-oz variety but has since added the 80-oz Elite and the 108-oz Colossal, which measures nearly 4 in. tall when baked. The plant bakes these cheesecakes in one of 13 Cutler rotary deck ovens. The finished product is frozen in an spiral blast freezer before moving to cutting and packaging. Its newest line is the company’s most automated, employing four 300-l planetary mixers. Batter is pumped to

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Baking&Snack - April 2011

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