The Twinkie Non-Mystery
So it's a slow day at work and i'm reading the Wikipedia entry for Hostess Twinkies. According to them, there's been a long-running mystery over how Twinkies are actually cooked. This was resolved sometime in 2005 with the "revelation" that the cake is baked upside down, and then "inflated" when the filling is injected.
I checked a few other references and read essentially the same story.
Well, I can personally confirm this is no secret. Sometime during my grade-school years (most likely 1977ish, because Wonder Bread had Star Wars cards in it), my class toured the Hostess factory in Framingham, MA. They specifically told us that was how Twinkies were made, and we even saw the process. The small trays of batter, the flat just-baked cakes, and the machine that pumped them full of filling. It was no secret.
The reason I remember the Star Wars cards was because at one point in the tour we passed a big rolling dustbin. It was mostly full of crumbs, but there were also scads of Star Wars cards in there, prompting a horde of crazed geeks to descend on the bin and dig through it like crazy. It was awesome.
In another semi-related story, I worked at a movie theater in high school that was right near the factory. One night after work a bunch of us were hanging out at someone's house. A couple guys announced they were going on a "hostess run'. They soon returned with three or four pallets of Hostess cakes. Apparently security at the factory was pretty light. They just drove over, opened the back of a truck, and liberated some snacky goodness.
I checked a few other references and read essentially the same story.
Well, I can personally confirm this is no secret. Sometime during my grade-school years (most likely 1977ish, because Wonder Bread had Star Wars cards in it), my class toured the Hostess factory in Framingham, MA. They specifically told us that was how Twinkies were made, and we even saw the process. The small trays of batter, the flat just-baked cakes, and the machine that pumped them full of filling. It was no secret.
The reason I remember the Star Wars cards was because at one point in the tour we passed a big rolling dustbin. It was mostly full of crumbs, but there were also scads of Star Wars cards in there, prompting a horde of crazed geeks to descend on the bin and dig through it like crazy. It was awesome.
In another semi-related story, I worked at a movie theater in high school that was right near the factory. One night after work a bunch of us were hanging out at someone's house. A couple guys announced they were going on a "hostess run'. They soon returned with three or four pallets of Hostess cakes. Apparently security at the factory was pretty light. They just drove over, opened the back of a truck, and liberated some snacky goodness.