Original subtitles

Oh! This is the life, Cherry, isn't it?

Sat outside, cup of tea...

..and a tin of biscuits.

And when it comes to biscuits,

I see you as a custard cream. Everybody loves them.

Do you know what you remind me of? A teeny, tiny little cookie.

Lovely while you're there, but it doesn't last very long.

Today, we're at one of Europe's biggest biscuit factories.

- Shall we get in? - Yeah.

But even Cherry can't burst my bubble today...

Hey!

..because I'm like a kid in a sweet shop.

Everyone's going to wonder what's happened to this show.

Well, a biscuit shop.

Everywhere I look in here, there's something delightful.

Finding out how the most memorable treat in my mum's biscuit tin...

Oh!

..is made...

That's so good, that.

..and getting into some sticky situations along the way.

Jenny! Jen, I'm losing it.

Hang on.

LAUGHTER

Get 'em in, love!

Just get 'em in as best we can. Oh!

LAUGHTER CONTINUES

Cherry's under pressure, too...

- Oh, it's gone! - Oh!

..in a quest to test the best biscuit to dunk.

- 100! - 100 dunks!

SHE SCREAMS

While a less caffeinated Ruth Goodman...

A mobile canteen.

..discovers how a million women risked their lives

to provide a brew and biscuit where it was needed most.

They really are the forgotten heroines of the Second World War.

Did you know that 4.4 billion biscuits

pass through this factory every year?

I mean, how do they produce so many?

I am so glad you asked because, literally,

that's what we're here to tell everybody.

Welcome to Inside The Factory.

- Hand washing. - Here we go.

I always feel like a surgeon doing this.

- Like that. - Yeah, exactly.

Right. Here we go.

Thank you. Right, go and do some work.

Have a good 'un.

This is the Fox's Burton's biscuit factory in Cwmbran, South Wales.

And they've been making biscuits here since 1939.

And for myself, a person

who absolutely loves biscuits, this place is heaven on Earth.

Let's get involved.

- Hiya, love. - You all right?

We're only wandering past. You're all right.

Look at these little rascals.

How are you, pal? I recognise that.

As well as cookies

and other classics like Wagon Wheels...

..this factory produces one of

the most recognisable biscuits in Britain.

Ah, the mighty Jammie Dodger.

They've been making these little beauties

at this factory since the 1960s,

and they've been a tea-time staple ever since.

Now, today, I'm following production of the pack of eight.

So, while I have a sneaky brew, Cherry's getting

the biscuit ball rolling with delivery driver Marcin.

- Hello there. I've come to help. - Oh, lovely.

- Thank you. - So what's in here? - We've got plain flour.

- Plain white flour? - Yeah. - For biscuits?

- For a biscuit. - OK. And how much is in here? - 26 tonnes.

- That's a lot of biscuits. - It's a lot.

The factory gets through five tankers

of fine white biscuit flour every day.

It's all right. I work out.

And once it's connected to the 50-tonne silo...

Snug as a bug in a rug.

..we can start the clock on our production.

I'm feeding the factory with flour.

As the flour flows...

Hiya, pal. You all right?

..I'm sorting the other ingredients at the weighing area,

where head of research and development

Gemma James and shift operation manager

Jamie Caswell are already hard at work.

- Hi, Gemma. - Hi, Paddy. - How are you? You OK?

- Yeah, good, thank you. - You all right, Jamie?

- Hiya, Paddy. - Don't leave me hanging like that.

Now, you've got a handful of powder there.

- I have indeed. - I've stopped you mid scoop. What are we doing here?

So we've got the key

ingredients here going into our biscuits.

So we've got the bicarbonate of soda, which is a raising agent.

It helps release the carbon dioxide. So it helps with the raising of

the biscuit and the finished texture.

So you've got the bubble structure, so it's nice and light.

Also scooped into colour-coded bags is a butter alternative

and table salt.

And what are you doing there, Jamie? Are you measuring them all out, pal?

Measuring them all out. We could use up to 70 bags per day.

- So this is a full-time job for someone to do this all day. - Wow.

Just while we're here, and we're right at the start here,

I want to get this out the way.

When it comes to dunking in a cup of tea...

..these aren't the biscuit I go to.

Do you dunk the old jammy biscuits?

Yes, I would.

And just to put it out there, I prefer herbal tea to dunk.

- Hang on here, Paddy. - Hold me up, pal.

- Hang on here, Paddy. - Did you hear what she said then?

That's sacrilege! My word. Well, everyone's got their different ways

of dunking their biscuits in the tea, but there's a real

scientific approach to how long you leave them in,

what's the correct texture and everything else.

And do you know who knows the answer to that?

- Cherry? - Cherry.

She knows. Cherry Healey.

That's right, Paddy.

- Can I have one cup of tea and two biscuits, please? - Yes.

Any biscuit can be dunked, and probably should be dunked.

But which dunker is the best, according to science?

To help me put it to the test...

Hi there. Can I get a tea and two biscuits, please?

..I'm meeting engineer

and Great British Bake Off finalist Andrew Smyth.

- Well, hi, Andrew. - Hello, Cherry. - Why do we feel the impulse,

the wild impulse to dunk our biscuit in our tea?

Well, I think first and foremost,

it releases a load of tastes and flavours and aromas.

But different biscuits perform very differently.

- Not all biscuits are equal. - No. Absolutely not.

And there's been quite a few studies done on this.

And two NHS doctors put these to the test,

and we're going to take inspiration from them today and do some science.

We've come to the University of Reading

to identify the ultimate dunking champion.

- Welcome to the lab, Cherry. - Very sciencey. I love it already.

So we've got three biscuits that I've chosen.

- We've got the traditional digestive. - Good old classic staple.

- Second, the modest rich tea biscuit. - It's got the word "tea" on it.

You would hope that it would do well.

And last but not least, the oat biscuit.

- Chunky, oaty... - Texture.

All the biscuits might look similar, but how they're made

and the ingredients actually are quite different.

Each supermarket own-brand biscuit will be dunked

in a beaker of freshly-prepared English breakfast tea,

brewed for five minutes before milk is added,

and tested when it's between 60 and 65 Celsius.

Test number one is absorption,

so we're looking at how much tea the biscuits can soak up.

And all biscuits are porous. So that means they've got all these

little gaps and channels in between the crumbs of the biscuit.

And through capillary action,

that soaks up the tea into the biscuit.

What do you mean by capillary action?

So capillary action is the tendency for a fluid to go

up a channel when it's presented with it.

- The tea wants to be in the biscuit? - Exactly.

It's gagging to get in there.

First, we weigh the three un-dunked biscuits...

Chocks away. ..and then dunk each one

precisely halfway into the tea for exactly five seconds...

And out we come. ..and weigh each biscuit again

to reveal the percentage increase in weight of each dunked bickie.

So the winner of that one was the rich tea biscuit,

which absorbed a whopping 66% of its weight in tea.

So the biscuit that absorbs the most tea,

therefore helping the flavour compounds move around,

would that taste better in theory?

Yes, absolutely. It more efficiently distributes

all those flavours and aromas around your mouth,

- which is where you perceive flavour. - So the tea becomes almost a vehicle

for the delicious flavours in the biscuit?

Yes. It's transporting us to flavour land.

CHERRY LAUGHS

But absorption could

impact another important biscuit quality.

Are we interviewing the biscuits for test number two?

Test number two, Cherry, is all about crunch.

Are you saying this is a crunch-ometer?

- It is the crunch-ometer. - Let's start with the digestive.

OK.

I'm adding the tea.

I syringe 3ml of freshly-brewed tea onto the centre of each biscuit...

- Thirsty biscuit. - ..and wait for it to absorb for four seconds...

Quiet in the lab, please.

57.8.

..and then snap it in half, one centimetre away

from the crunch-ometer.

The rich tea...

- 67.1. - The oaty biscuit...

- 61! - So the rich tea biscuit is the snappiest,

the crunchiest. But why is that a good thing?

Well, believe it or not, the crunch actually makes

a biscuit taste better because it makes our

brain think it's a fresher biscuit. So even though we're dunking it

and we're reducing a bit of that crunch,

the louder it is, the more we perceive it as fresh and delicious.

Andrew, what is the third and final challenge

that our biscuits have to face?

We're going to see which one can be dunked the most

before it just crumbles into the tea.

When I've dunked my biscuit,

if it falls into my tea, it's like all is lost. It's ruined.

It's the breaking-point test, the most dramatic of them all.

It's like the gladiator ring.

DRAMATIC MUSIC

Biscuits, are you ready?

In.

- Out. - I lower each of the three

biscuits exactly halfway into a freshly-brewed tea,

- again... - Out.

..and again...

..until...

- Oh, it's gone! - Oh!

- Seven dunks. - Seven dunks to the digestive.

Oh, there we go. Oh!

- There we go. - She's down. - Ten dunks.

What is this biscuit made of?

Out. I'm flabbergasted. In.

- 100 dunks! - 100 dunks! - 100! In.

Keep going, Cherry. Do it for science. Out.

I've gone into a really weird place.

ANDREW LAUGHS

- Out. - What's going on?

I'm scared. I'm scared.

Do you know, I feel like Ant and Dec are gonna...

Ah!

THEY YELP

We don't have to stay here forever! It finished.

It finished!

- 135 dunks. - Hundred...

That number doesn't feel real, but... Wow.

We were there.

Compared to SEVEN for the digestive.

Why did this biscuit suddenly become invincible?

It's incredible, right?

And as you look inside a rich tea biscuit,

it's actually very tightly packed

and has these kind of layers that look a little bit more bready.

It's got lots of gluten in there. And you saw that,

the way it stretched and held together, right?

That's all that gluten that is softening, and it stays elastic.

And more gluten - stronger structure and lighter.

It's the dream combination. It's a structural engineering marvel.

So the rich tea biscuit is the overall winner.

But do you want a biscuit that you can dunk 130-plus times?

I think the perfect time is actually around one second,

to get that balance of aroma release,

but retaining crunch. And that's roughly about the time

it takes to say "one biscuit".

"One biscuit".

That's a one-second dunk.

Mmm!

Had a bit of tea, the biscuity aromas, little crunch.

And I have to say... that is dunking lovely.

Mmm!

And while we leave Cherry scoffing the programme's profits...

Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley

..I'm living my 1980s childhood dreams.

Hey.

I'm at the Jammie Dodgers factory.

There they are.

# Never gonna give you up

# Never gonna to let you down

# Never gonna run around and desert you... #

This is heaven.

# Never gonna say goodbye

# Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you... #

Lovely stuff.

My pre-weighed biscuit ingredients have been tipped into a mixer.

Then a clever computer adds sugar, flour and vegetable oil.

And after 15 minutes of mixing...

..Gemma and I can see the results.

# Dee, dee-dee, dee-dee... #

Bit of tap dancing.

# Dee, dee, dee, dee, dee... #

It'll be here in a minute.

- Oh, here you go! - Here we go. - Just tipping on cue.

A whopping 600kg of dough,

enough to make 93,600 biscuits...

..drops into a dough cutter,

which separates it into strips.

Ah.

So here we've got the finished dough, Paddy.

- It's quite soft, isn't it? - It's lovely and soft.

So in the dough we've got the raising agent,

so the carbon dioxide bubbles are gassing away in there.

It's quite cool. I expected it to be warm.

So ideally, we want the dough about 22, 24 Celsius at this stage.

See, when it comes to biscuits, that'd do me.

Just put a bit of jam

in the middle of that and I'll be happy with that.

- No. - Jammy balls.

Sounds wrong, but it tasted nicer in my head.

GEMMA LAUGHS

Once this has gone up here, then what?

Now we need to transform this dough into biscuits,

and once it leaves here,

it will head to the rotary moulder and you will meet Rebecca there.

- So is that me and you done? - That is, Paddy. - Aw!

Gemma, lovely meeting you.

Listen, hold that.

- I'll see you in a bit. - See you.

Our dough travels along a 17m-long conveyor.

And guiding me on its onward journey is Rebecca Phillips.

You all right, Rebecca?

- How are you? You OK? - I'm very well, thank you, Paddy.

Gemma's sent me down to see you. What do you do here?

- I'm the factory general manager. - You're the person we have to thank.

Families up and down the country - they'd be lost without you,

- Rebecca, let me tell you. - It's our pleasure.

Now, before we crack on, I've just got to ask you -

what are you dipping your biscuit into?

A strong cup of tea.

We're going to get on. Gemma, lovely person,

but to be honest, you need to get rid of her.

She dips hers in herbal tea. It's not good for the factory.

While HR escorts Gemma off the premises...

..my chopped-up dough is heading to the moulding area...

..where it's getting some proper love and attention.

- # One, two, three - Good love

- # Now, come on, give me that lovin' - Good love

- # All I need is lovin' - Good love

# Good, good lovin', baby... #

This is what I recognise.

I've noticed they're coming out of...

- It looks like a mould. - Yes.

I presumed it'd be like a cookie-cutter kind of thing,

- how you do them. - No, not like you'd do at home.

The reason we use a moulding roller is because we want

to be able to maintain the intricacy of the design,

and also the consistency of the biscuit.

Our dough lands on the brass roller,

which is imprinted with 264 biscuit-shaped moulds.

A forcing roller pushes the dough into the moulds,

and a fixed knife removes any excess that can then be recycled.

2,880 intricate tops and bottoms are made every minute.

- Can you see the well on the base? - Yes.

Now, that has been specifically designed

so that when the product is baked and cooled and we add the jam,

that the jam sits nicely in the centre of the biscuit.

You don't get any jam spilling over the outside.

I just presumed it was a flat biscuit with jam on,

and then the other bit was stuck on the top.

But I remember when I was a kid,

they had like a really intricate design.

- Do you remember that? - Yeah, I do.

And the design has changed over the years.

If you look at the base of the biscuit,

- you can see the little hearts. - Yeah. - Now, that was something from

the original design that we wanted to keep.

And it's not something that the consumer would necessarily see.

So obviously it's sandwiched together.

Those hearts are never seen by the naked eye, really.

- Yeah. - So why is that still there?

It's just part of our legacy.

# L is for the way you look at me... #

And why the hearts?

It's just a biscuit full of love.

Oh, I love that. I love that.

# And love is all that I can give to you

# Love is more than just a game for two... #

Now, even though I consider myself a biscuit expert...

..I had no idea they were made in such colossal amounts.

Without this level of production,

none of us would have the choice we have when it comes to biscuits.

Let's be honest, that doesn't bear thinking about.

But when did production on this scale begin?

Ruth's in London to find out.

Nearly 170 years ago, a family of tea importers, based near here on

the South Bank of the Thames,

decided to diversify and make biscuits.

From the wharves and mills of the London docks,

they had easy access to cheap imported flour and sugar.

The company was called Peek Frean,

and using the very latest steam-powered machinery,

their factories created some of the world's most famous

biscuits right here in Bermondsey,

an area that became known as Biscuit Town.

Food historian Mukta Das is giving me

a peek inside the building that was once a giant factory.

So this biscuit factory was built in 1866,

and we're standing in a room that they would have used to sort out

all the broken biscuits into packets

and sold at the local markets cheaply.

This is quite late, though, isn't it?

When you think of when the Industrial Revolution starts,

you know, way back in sort of 1700,

it's not until the mid-Victorian, 150 years later, that you start

to get industrialised food production.

We've had industrialised textiles, industrialised iron and steel,

but food is really late to the party.

That's right. So it's only really in the 1860s

you get a kind of level

of industrialisation that created the snack biscuit.

This was one of the first factories who embraced technology to such

an extent that this was purpose-built

to house these huge steam-powered turbines

that would turn belts and conveyors and cutting machines.

Before these newfangled machines,

posh biscuits were the preserve of the wealthy.

But this technology meant that fancier snack biscuits,

like chocolate digestives, and complex sandwich biscuits,

like bourbons and custard creams,

could be produced on a huge scale, making them more accessible to all.

And their first best seller in 1861 was the ground-breaking Garibaldi.

It's quite innovative as that,

with fruit in the middle and then two biscuits baked together

with flour from North America, fruit from the colonies.

You know, this is kind of an empire-building biscuit.

It reflected global Britain of its time.

By the turn of the 20th century,

Peek Frean was producing hundreds of millions of biscuits a year.

It was an incredible industrial success story,

and Mukta has found an extraordinary archive film that celebrated it.

So this is Peek Frean's biscuit factory right here,

but in 1906.

Oh, my goodness.

An Edwardian Inside The Factory.

Ah, now, here we can see all the machines going.

Now that is an Edwardian moustache, isn't it?

THEY LAUGH

Very fine. This is the cutting-edge technology,

these sorts of rolling and mixing machines.

This is mass production for a mass market.

An oven that... It just rolls through all by itself.

Cooking as it goes.

At its peak, the factory employed 4,000 people.

But like many in this early industrial era,

there was little health and safety.

No guards or anything, look. Belts running all over the place.

Jeepers, that place must have been dangerous.

Oh, my goodness, look at this little lad!

- Oh, how old must he be?! - Yeah.

In 1901, 22% of boys

in England aged between ten and 14 were working.

Thankfully, that's a thing of the past.

In 1933, the Children and Young Persons Act

set a minimum working age of 14,

and in 1972 that age was raised to 16.

- The packing is all female. - 100% female.

And again, young - look.

STEAM WHISTLE

Ha! An entire community streaming out of the factory.

Here comes the finished product, look.

Horses and carts over the cobbles.

And a couple of motorised vehicles, too.

So this is right on the cusp, isn't it,

when the first motor lorries

are coming in to replace the horse and cart?

It was a new era of the mass market, with Peek Frean exporting

affordable sweet treats from Biscuit Town

right across the country

AND around the world from the nearby London docks.

The factory closed in 1989, but this remarkable film shows

that it was right at the forefront

of our mass-produced food revolution.

This is very much like those shots we have at the end

of our programmes, with lorries bringing the produce out.

It's exactly the same!

Just 118 years earlier.

And there's no dodgy comedian from Bolton.

Hey, no need, Ruth. She's always so lovely on the telly.

The mass production of biscuits may not be a new thing...

..but here in Cwmbran,

they certainly seem to have perfected the art.

Everywhere I look in here, there's something delightful.

And quite a few of the 700-strong team

have dedicated years to topping up our biscuit tins.

- How long have you worked here? - I've been here about eight years.

Sarah's been here about 30.

It's 33 on here. I've always been on this line.

Just under two hard-working hours into production,

my moulded dough biscuits

are being swept along another conveyor into an oven.

And an epic oven it is.

It's the length of eight double-decker buses.

And it's where I find factory manager Rebecca.

This oven has got four zones,

and each zone has got a different purpose.

This is between zone one and two, OK?

Get that door open, Rebecca. I need to see this.

As you can see, you've got some lift on the biscuits.

- Yeah. - And this is because in that first zone,

the raising agents that we've put in the product

back at the mixing stage are starting to activate.

That rise will drop

as the biscuit continues through the baking process.

We're not baking cakes. We're making biscuits.

But it's essential that we get

that lift to make sure we get the right texture.

OK.

The biscuits now pass through zones three and four,

which are set to 235 Celsius,

reducing moisture levels to 2%.

And after a total bake of eight minutes, they exit the oven.

# Just one look

# And I fell so hard

# Oh, oh... #

Ah, now, these are the colours that I remember.

Golden light brown.

# I found out how good it feels... #

So the product at this stage is fully baked.

And one of the things that's really important

at this stage is that we've driven off enough moisture.

- Yeah. - Once the biscuit shell is baked

and cooled and we add the jam,

the jam migrates liquid into the biscuit.

So if we haven't driven off enough moisture during the baking process,

we'll end up with a soggy biscuit,

which is absolutely what we don't want.

- No-one wants that. - So if I take a biscuit off the line,

really hot, about 90 degrees.

But you'll see that the texture at this point is still quite soft.

Yeah, it is. It's got it... Yeah. It's bendy.

- So how will that harden up? - Just as the biscuit cools.

So we've got around 80m of cooling conveyors.

And it's no different to what you would do on your wire rack at home.

- Can I try one of them? - You certainly can.

- Mind your mouth. - Warm, yeah.

- Oh! - Good?

Oh, that's lovely.

And do you know what? With that, you've obviously got the

- jam element, but that biscuit's actually delicious on its own. - Yeah.

Off they go along the cooling conveyor,

reducing temperatures from 90 to 35 Celsius...

It actually feels a bit cooler here as well, doesn't it?

..and my biscuits are ready to let loose.

Oh, look at that.

So this is the start of our sorting process.

They've got all these biscuits coming through,

but they're a mixture of tops and bottoms.

The tops and bottoms are clocked by hidden sensors

and funnelled into separate channels.

Right, Paddy. So they've been transferred

- then onto what we call a V-belt. - Right.

- A V-belt? - A V-belt. Like the letter. And it's just to do with...

Oh, I know what a V is, Rebecca. I know I'm from Bolton,

but I know...I know what... I know the alphabet!

- Are you sure? - Well, about half of it.

THEY LAUGH

The V-belt moves the biscuits

from flat to vertical, and as they glide along,

they get checked for defects by machine operator Richard Maggs.

How are you, Richard? How are you, pal? Are you OK, bud?

- Yeah, I'm all right. - Richard, how long have you been with us?

- Ten years I've been here now. - Ten years? - Yeah.

Now, ten years, for someone working in a factory,

- that's still a starter, isn't it? - Yeah.

You're still considered like a newbie.

A baby. Always learning, mate.

As well as removing any broken ones,

Richard neatly levels the biscuits

so they don't clog up the next machine.

If there's any slightly stuck up,

that'll absolutely cock that process up down there.

Yeah, it can do. And also while we're here, we're looking

for defect biscuits as well, to take them out.

- Can I have a go at the old...? - Yeah, you can have a go

at patting them down and then play hook the duck.

- Oh, what's this one?! - Gotta hook them.

- What are you doing with that one?! - Just put it in.

- Oh. - Hook 'em up. Unfortunately, you don't win a prize.

I'll tell you what. Take that back.

- I'm not interested in that. - I'll do the patting.

Here we go.

Come on.

Oh, go on, Paddy.

THEY CHEER

Sign you up now, you can have a job here.

I might do it again, just to show it's not beginner's luck.

- Yeah. - Here we go.

Hey!

Tell you what. That's made my day.

Smoothed and sorted, my biscuits move onwards.

OK, Paddy, so what we have here is the shuffleboard.

- Have we all got to do that? - You've got to shuffle it.

# Duh, duh, duh, duh... #

# Madness

# Madness, they call it madness

# Madness... #

Everyone's going to wonder what's happened to this show.

And what this is doing is changing

the orientation of the biscuits again.

Two metal plates on the shuffleboard

move the biscuits into sets of tops and bottoms.

And is there a reason why it's now bottom, top, bottom, top?

It's just getting ready to be presented to the jam.

I love that. "Being presented to the jam". While we're here as well,

Rebecca, I hope you don't mind because I'm loving the Jammie D's,

but I did spot, further up there, another classic biscuit.

Do you mind if I go and have a quick look at it?

- Absolutely. - Right. All right. I won't be long.

While my biscuits are organised into pairs

and head towards the jam, I'm being pulled down memory lane.

THEME FROM HOVIS BREAD ADVERT

Ah, look at that.

Wagon Wheel!

You've got the biscuit base. You've got the chocolate.

But the star of the show is

that lovely marshmallow in the middle.

Do you know who'd like this? Cherry.

Where is she?

Have you seen Cherry?!

About that tall! Talks a lot!

Give me a break, Paddy.

SLURPS

I really needed that.

But when you put marshmallows on the top,

I'm sorry, it takes it to a whole new level.

They are rather unusual. They're soft and squishy, yet firm.

What are marshmallows, anyway?

In search of sweet secrets,

I've come to a rather special bakery near Leeds.

I'm definitely in the right place

because even the air...tastes like sugar.

Oonagh Simms is the Marshmallowist.

Oh, my God, Oonagh, I have died and gone to marshmallow heaven.

We really love marshmallows in this bakery.

Clearly, you do!

What a beautiful, floofy sight.

They are very soft and very floofy.

There's nothing really like them. And why is it called a marshmallow?

It's actually from the mallow plant.

A plant?

So this plant usually grows in sort of marshy areas.

- Hmm. - Marsh... - You follow where we're going. - ..mallow.

OONAGH LAUGHS

That is called a marshmallow because of that plant?

And it's grown all around the world.

Asia, Africa, Europe, even in the UK.

It grows around, like, salt-land areas,

- coastal areas, marshes. - OK.

How on earth do you get from that...

..to that?

So the mallow plant has actually been used

for thousands of years to make some form of sweet treat.

So we use the root, which we dry up.

And if you steep this in water, you get

a gloopy, like, viscous-y texture.

And in ancient Egypt, they used to incorporate this with honey.

So it'd be used as like a sweet treat,

or even to cure sore throats.

The plant isn't used in modern marshmallows,

so Oonagh starts her recipe with three types of sugar,

including a very smooth liquid sugar known as invert.

This stops the crystallisation of the sugar in the marshmallows.

So instead of getting a grainy marshmallow,

we get a really smooth marshmallow.

We're making a cherry- and rose-flavoured marshmallow.

Oh, lovely.

I'm going to take this up to a very specific 112 degrees.

That is when the sugar starts forming with

the water of the cherry puree and starts making

the perfect strands, and contains

the right amount of moisture to make the best type of marshmallows.

What happens next?

So this is where we're going to add our sheets of gelatine.

So this is what replaces the mallow plant.

- They're very weird, aren't they? - They're completely transparent.

They're completely odourless.

And they provide the stability that we want in a marshmallow.

Gelatine is solid at room temperature,

but turns liquid when heated in water,

as the amino acid building blocks of its protein structure loosen.

It's then mixed into the hot, fruity concoction.

So all the strands of the amino acids, when it gets heated up,

all unwinding and loosening, and then when it forms a solid,

they're all coming back together and binding up.

The gelatine and its flexible amino acid must be worked into

the mix while it's hot.

This also fluffs it up before it cools down and sets hard.

And this is where we're going to put all the air bubbles into those

strands, that when they reform, they'll be bouncy and fluffy.

- You bring the air in... - Exactly. - ..and then it gets cooler.

- And then...and then you trap it. - Exactly.

The stand mixer works away for ten minutes,

quadrupling the volume of the marshmallow mix.

It's completely changed texture.

It's completely changed colour.

So as those amino strands are cooling down

and they've incorporated all that air,

they're building this sort of scaffolding for making the

foamy marshmallow that we want, that fluffy texture.

Oonagh carefully judges the precise moment to stop mixing...

..before I pour out our puffed-up powder-pink creation

to set at room temperature.

I'm really surprised it doesn't

get baked or you don't put it in a fridge or a freezer.

- Nope. - You just leave it so that the gelatine

can do its work, harden up,

create that really solid foundation,

so that those air bubbles are trapped forever.

Exactly.

The marshmallows take 12 hours to cool and set.

Then they're dusted with a confectioner's mix

of icing sugar and cornflour to reduce stickiness.

We are going to cut them into little cubes.

POPPING

- Is that air bubbles popping? - Yeah.

POPPING CONTINUES

So then, perfect little marshmallows.

I need to have a go at this.

Oh! And there we have it.

- There's some quite big holes here. Look at that one. - The gelatine

has incorporated loads of air, so it's really light.

And it's almost souffle-like in texture.

Oh.

Mmm. That is so fruity and intense.

But it just disappears. The minute it hits my tongue,

- it melts and disappears. - Yeah.

It's really velvety.

Do you know what? This reminds me of Paddy -

big, sweet and soft on the inside.

Aw.

Aw! Thanks, Cherry.

They do look good, but I'm all about the biscuits.

And my shortcake bases are missing a very important component.

Biscuits everywhere - still not seeing any jam.

So I'm following my nose to meet up with Rebecca.

I can already smell the jam.

And there are my tops and bottoms on their way to meet it.

This is it now. Now it's becoming a reality.

Beautiful.

# All right

# We're jammin'

# I wanna jam it with you

# We're jammin'... #

So what we have here is the depositor,

and this has got built-in cameras.

- Right. - So as the biscuit bases pass through,

the cameras detect the biscuit, and they'll deposit the jam.

- Right. - And temperature on depositing is absolutely critical.

So we're looking between 40 and 50 degrees.

If it's too warm, it's too runny and it won't stay inside the well.

- Right. - And then we get the sticky bottoms...

- Yeah. - ..further down the process. - We don't want that.

And if the jam is too cold,

it won't be as free flowing as it needs to be.

So a change in temperature slightly either side will ruin the biscuit?

- Yes. - Right. OK.

# And I hope this jam is gonna last... #

Exactly 4.8g of extra smooth,

warm raspberry-flavoured jam is placed inside

the moulded well on every biscuit base.

- We've got some of the jam here if you'd like to try it, Paddy. - I...

I'm not really in the mood, Rebecca, if I'm being honest.

Of course I want to try it. Of course I want to try it.

There you go. Fill your boots.

- This is actual jam at the middle of one of them little rascals? - Yeah.

Oh!

See, instantly, if I had a blindfold on

and smelt that, I'd be saying it's a Jammie D.

Let's have a go.

Oh!

Oh!

This...this is not going to come out how I mean it,

but it's a very childish jam. Do you know what I mean?

- Yeah, I get that. - It just takes me back to my childhood.

It's a nice...a lovely flavour to it. It's not grown-up.

- Yeah. - Fantastic.

Oh, my word!

In fact, I'd say, really...

..the only thing that's missing is the biscuit.

- Yeah. - What we need to do now is to put the tops onto the bottoms.

The jam is dotted onto the biscuit bases, and small vacuum cups

lift and place the tops to make the perfect sandwich.

OK, Paddy, so now you can see a finished biscuit.

Yes. Fantastic. Look at that.

Rows and rows of little jammy beauties.

# The memories you've given me

# Memories are made of this... #

And my six-year-old self would never forgive me

if I didn't have a sneaky taste of a warm Dodger

straight off the line.

# Fold it lightly with a dream... #

- Feel free to try one if you'd like. - Thought you'd never ask.

I'll go for that one there.

- Oh. - Is it good?

Oh.

Oh.

Oh!

That's so good, that.

That's the freshest Jammie Dodger you'll ever eat.

Why are they called Jammie Dodgers?

Well, Roger the Dodger, who was in the Beano magazine...

- Remember? - I used to read Beano when I was a kid.

..he was always up to mischief. OK? And he was always managing

to be jammy enough to get himself out of sticky situations.

So someone at the biscuit factory went, "That's a bit of inspiration."

They were like that and they formed

a biscuit on the strength of that comic?

- Absolutely. - That's amazing. - It is.

You know before when I said...tasted the jam, I said,

- "What's missing is the biscuit"? - Yeah.

Now we've got the jam and the biscuit,

what's missing now, Rebecca?

Come on.

- Tea! - Cup of tea! Of course.

While we go and have a brew and enjoy these,

Ruth's finding out how biscuits boosted morale during World War II.

Come on, Rebecca. Doesn't go anywhere,

but we'll pretend, Rebecca. We'll pretend.

We'll just walk like this.

REBECCA LAUGHS

In 1940, during the Second World War,

Britain came under attack from German bombers,

causing devastation and costing

the lives of tens of thousands of people.

As bombs fell across the country,

the government feared that high casualty numbers on

the home front would lead to

a collapse of morale and widespread panic.

Volunteers like air raid wardens and firefighters were drafted in,

but more support was needed.

Historian Lucy Noakes has studied how spirits were lifted.

The whole point of air raids was to destroy morale.

It's targeted at ordinary people, at home, in towns and cities.

And you just think... I mean,

how would you cope in those situations?

Yeah. I think it was really, really difficult. But luckily, there was

a group of women who were ready to step up and try to help.

And they did it in vans like this.

A mobile canteen.

The Women's Voluntary Service, or WVS.

- Cup of tea, ladies? - Oh, yes, please. - Thank you very much.

Biscuits, too. Thank you.

The WVS - they organise blood transfusions,

they help to co-ordinate evacuees, they mended uniforms.

But one of their most important roles

was keeping up morale during air raids.

Where a bomb has fallen,

the mobile canteen, manned by the WVS, arrives with

that inevitable prop to British morale - a cup of tea.

And tea wasn't their only weapon.

The ladies of the Women's Voluntary Service often provided biscuits.

Quite the treat during rationing.

Sugar was rationed from January 1940 because it was

so hard to bring supplies in during the Second World War.

But although sugar was rationed,

they tried really hard to keep biscuits off the ration.

They decided that they would prioritise -

servicemen, servicewomen, firefighters would get biscuits.

Air raid wardens, volunteers who work during the air raid,

they would get a cup of sweet tea with sugar and a couple of biscuits,

as a kind of thank you

for putting their lives on the line through the night.

By 1940, the WVS was running

at least 700 canteens all over the country,

and the Ministry of Information

promoted the work of their brave recruits.

So this was a woman called Patience "Boo" Brand.

"Boo" was her nickname.

And so Patience was from a pretty posh background.

You would be with a nickname like that?

Yeah, you absolutely would.

And you can see here...

So she's in front of a Women's Voluntary Service tea van

that was donated by the American Red Cross.

And you can see her helping to dole out cups of tea to Royal Engineers.

But because the WVS was a voluntary organisation,

there was really very little in the way of kind of rank.

Everybody mucked in, and women came from all walks of life,

and it was a way

for every woman to kind of join in and help in the war effort.

AIR-RAID SIREN BLARES

Often, women volunteers like Boo

were on duty during the actual raids,

supporting the anti-aircraft gunners

and giving tea and biscuits to people in shelters.

One of the country's most devastating raids took place

on the 14th of November, 1940,

when hundreds of German bombers attacked the city of Coventry.

568 people were killed.

At the time, my grandparents were living there

for war work and my grandad,

he spent that night of the big air raid,

he was on fire-watching duty on

the roof of the factory where he worked. But my grandmother

would talk about the next day in particular, and just the streams

of people leaving Coventry because they'd lost everything.

They were leaving the city with absolutely nothing,

sometimes without even shoes on their feet.

You can get a sense of the devastation there.

You can see how absolutely flattened...

- And there's the van. WVS. - Yeah, there they are.

The bombing of Coventry was so intense,

so much was destroyed,

that the local WVS couldn't cope on their own.

So these mobile vans came from all over the country.

And one of the volunteers with

the Leicester van was a canteen worker called

Mrs Janet Wates.

She was dishing out tea and biscuits to the people of Coventry.

In fact, they had their own roll of honour.

And you can see Janet Wates' name on there.

"Janet Wates - canteen worker. She had been over to Coventry

"with other canteen workers, helping after their first blitz.

"She returned home to sleep and was killed

"when her house was destroyed by an HE."

HE - high explosives. That's a massive bomb of about 50kg.

So this is a woman who's risked it

by going into the centre of Coventry.

She's been doing her bit

and then she gets home and she's killed immediately.

Yeah. Killed in her own bed.

More than 240 members of the Women's Voluntary Service lost their lives.

Their work didn't stop with the end of the really heavy air raids.

By 1942, there were about 1,500

of these mobile canteens.

At least a million women volunteered with them,

and it's said that they helped

about 10,000 people every night of the Blitz.

They really are the forgotten heroines of the Second World War.

This is where the bomb fell. The wardens are gone

and the demolition workers have taken over.

But the WVS are still there.

As long as men continue to work on a dusty job,

the mobile canteen visits them every day.

Yeah, it's not a small thing.

A cup of tea and a biscuit - it makes a difference.

It really does. It showed you that somebody cared,

that someone was there and somebody cared.

After me own morale-boosting brew and biscuit...

..I'm also ready for the final push.

Oh.

My finished biscuits are reporting for duty...

Wowzers.

..on a pretty impressive parade ground.

- Look at that. - This is our buffer room, Paddy.

How does it work in here, then?

So if we've got a problem downstairs,

this conveyor belt actually extends out.

And what that does,

it gives us 3.5 minutes of additional time.

- I can see it moving a little bit here. - Yeah.

A system of mortars enlarges the belt concertina-style,

creating extra space so problems downstream

can be sorted without causing a jammy traffic jam on the line.

When this is out at full length, there's about 5,000 biscuits

that can be in this room at any one time.

So they don't stop moving, it'll just get longer?

- Yeah. - Will that stretch right to the end? - Right to the end.

So if I ever come in this room and this is right at the end,

- I know it's kicking off. - Yeah, we've had a small issue

- downstairs somewhere. - OK. How many of these are going out every year?

Of these biscuits, around 274 million.

And from here, my little biscuits shoot off yet again.

They're flying down there, aren't they?

They're a bit like an air hockey table.

So it's using air to move the biscuits.

The belt gently floats them onto a dual carriageway of Dodgers.

Then two sets of four are stacked with a cardboard base.

They're flow wrapped into packs of eight and sealed at both ends,

before travelling onto packing.

- So this is our hand-packing station, Paddy. - Okey doke. Yeah.

- Do you fancy having a go? - I do. Let me speak to experts first.

- Hello. What's your name? - Hello. Jenny.

Jenny, nice to meet you. Paddy. Are you OK?

All right? Now, how long...

- How long have you been here, Jenny? - Just over 34 years.

- 34 years?! - Yeah. My husband worked here. That's where we met,

in fact, down here. Yeah. 23 years ago.

- 23 years ago. - Yeah.

That's the good thing about the factory, isn't it?

A big factory, you'll meet someone

who you work with and you end up courting,

you have kids. Sometimes the kids work here.

- Yeah. - So I've been watching you there

as I walk around. You make it look very easy.

But I'm sure it's not. Now, firstly...

..Jenny's got a very specialist glove on here.

- Shall I swap these round? - Yes, please, if you wouldn't mind, Paddy.

Very good. Here we go.

Hey.

Come on. We need to get a wriggle on here.

We've got to get these biscuits out!

LAUGHTER

Do you want to let Paddy have a go?

Yeah, I'll clean my mess up in a minute.

Right.

Whoa! Is it three at a time? My God! Come here.

LAUGHTER

Jenny's putting every minute of her 34 years of experience to good use.

She's like a biscuit ninja.

Jenny, I'm...

- How are you dropping them in so quickly? - Three at a time.

Six rows of three.

Yeah, but how are you keeping them...? They're stacking up here!

I can't get hold of them.

Right, hang on. Right. That's that. And they go underneath?

Yep. Put them...

Like that? Right. Here we go.

What's...what the hell?

Oh, my God, I'm losing them. Jen!

Jen, I'm losing it!

Jenny! The Jammie Dodgers!

Hang on.

LAUGHTER

Jen!

Get them in, love!

Just get them in as best we can.

Oh...

Right, Paddy, that's enough.

Right.

I'll leave you to it. You're doing a great...

I take it back, I take it back. I'm sorry about that.

It's all Jenny's fault. Right. Good luck.

Thank you very much.

Flippin' heck!

That's cost 'em a few packs. Sorry, folks.

- Right, see you later. - And you.

But Jenny quickly restores order.

And when the experts are in charge, 18 packets go neatly into each box.

Then my biscuits are stacked onto pallets...

..before a fleet of forklifts whisk them off to meet the lorry.

So this is our dispatch area, Paddy.

Look at that.

There they go.

- How many pallets are on there? - 26 on a single decker.

How many individual boxes are on them pallets?

154.

And dare I ask how many's in total on the back of that, then?

Just over half a million, Paddy.

Wow.

The factory's capable of producing 2.2 million Jammie Dodgers per day.

- Per day? - Per day. So we would send four or five vehicles every day.

I'm not going to even attempt to tot that up, but it's a lot.

- Lovely driving. - Thank you.

Straight in. Beautiful.

So that one's full up and ready to go now, Rebecca?

- Yep. Sure is. - Right.

- Which one is it? - Help yourself. - Hey! Whoa, whoa, whoa!

Stand back.

Safe travels!

Our work here is done. Right, Rebecca, come on.

There's more tea to be drank and more biscuits to be eaten.

Two hours and 34 minutes after the start of production,

my jammy biscuits are leaving the factory.

From South Wales, they head out all over the country.

And these biscuits travel.

The lucky little Dodgers are enjoyed as far away as Australia!

So there you have it. Now you know exactly

how these iconic biscuits are made.

2.2 million leave this factory every single day.

And I reckon half of those go to my house.

Right. Where's Cherry?

# Soon as I wake up every night, every day

# I know that it's you I need to take the blues away

# It must be love, love, love

# It must be love, love, love

# Nothing more, nothing less Love is the best... #