Ethel M. Mars Tour

After we left the Hoover Damn we went to the Ethel M. Chocolate Factory. I got this information off the internet, so you could see what Ethel M. was all about

Ethel M was founded by Forrest Mars, Sr., the patriarch of the Mars candy company (of Snickers and Milky Way fame). Mr. Mars retired from the family empire in 1976, but, not being the kind of person to put his feet up on the front porch, he decided to build a new factory where he could make fine chocolates the way he remembered his mother making them when he was a child. His mother's name was Ethel, and many of her recipes and methods are still used to create the confections named in her honor.

When you visit Ethel M Chocolates today, you can look right inside the factory through large glass windows. The first room on the tour is the kitchen, where all the candy fillings and centers are cooked. If you've timed your visit right, you might see, as we did, confectioners pouring huge batches of pecan brittle onto cooling tables, and smoothing it out with huge stainless steel rolling pins. Or you might see any number of other wonderful things. The Ethel M factory creates over fifty different kinds of chocolates, and all the centers are made in the kitchen, one tantalizing batch at a time.

The next room is where the candies get coated in chocolate on long machines called enrobers. We watched legions of raspberry centers emerge completely coated in milk chocolate. Also in this room are molding machines used to form chocolate shells for candies with soft centers, like Ethel M's famous liqueur-filled chocolates. The processes are explained on video monitors, and there are placards in front of the windows identifying all the machines.

In another smaller kitchen, we watched almond cluster candies being made and coated on an enrober. This was arguably the best part of the tour, because the small kitchen has no glass windows, and the confectioners gave us a taste of what they were making. Mmm.



Making chocolate
pretty cool caramel apples



Ethel M Chocolate Factory Tour
Pretty flowers in the catcus garden


Dean our bus driver
The bus!!!