The real-life Willy Wonka: Brian Sollitt, inventor of the After Eight, dies aged 74

OSCAR QUINE     THURSDAY 12 SEPTEMBER 2013

One of Britain’s most distinguished chocolatiers, whose proudest achievement was fathoming how to get the mint filling inside After Eights without it spilling from the sides, has died at the age of 74.

Brian Sollitt had an illustrious 53-year career with Rowntree’s in York, helping to devise many of the nation’s best-loved chocolate bars. Tirelessly devoted to his craft, he was involved in the creation of the Yorkie, Matchmakers, the Drifter and the Lion Bar.

Alex Hutchinson, a historian for Nestlé, which now owns Rowntree’s, said Mr Sollitt’s impact on British chocolate-making was “incalculable”.

Brian Sollitt, with a giant After Eight mint. Photograph: Nestlé

“It is easy to forget that the sweets we pick up in the shops today are things that would have been handmade lovingly in the early stages of development by Brian. He spent months – sometimes years – agonising over the technical details of his creations. He was an incredible man. He was asked to come up with this new chocolate and he did.”

Mr Sollitt was not always surrounded by sweet treats. Born in 1938, he grew up in a time of scarcity when chocolate was rationed. He got his first job at the Rowntree’s factory at 15, hand-piping chocolates for boxes of Black Magic. Swiftly promoted to the fantastically named Creme Experimentation division, he was asked to invent a luxury dark chocolate filled with a peppermint fondant.

The project was shrouded in secrecy, and to this day the process by which an After Eight’s fondant centre is encased within its fragile chocolate shell remains hush-hush. After its release in 1962 it fast became a dinner party staple. More than a billion boxes have now been sold.

Mr Sollitt was described as a popular figure within the company: a larger-than-life character who left seasonal gifts such as chocolate Santas outside his office for factory staff to take home. Passionate about the products he helped develop, he became an avid collector of After Eight paraphernalia, amassing one of the largest collections in the world. Last year, he came out of retirement to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his beloved creation, creating a special 3kg version of the chocolate to present to Parliament.

Kath Musgrove, a fellow confectioner, remembers Mr Sollitt lovingly piping and cooling new samples and presenting them in small, white boxes to the marketing department.

“I first met Brian in the covering room in Rowntree’s Creme Experimentation department. He was wielding his pallet knife deftly over the marble slab ‘tempering chocolate’. Watching him at work was like watching a true craftsman at his trade. Anyone who saw him was caught in his spell. He spent hours at that marble slab expertly hand-covering chocolates with their own individual markings.”

Millions of After Eights are made each year in Halifax, West Yorkshire, to be sold in more than 50 countries. Fans of the chocolate are said to have included the late Queen Mother.

Best bar none: Sollitt’s inventions

After Eight 800 million individual chocolates made each year

Peppermint fondant “enrobed” in a crisp dark chocolate shell. An enzyme is added to the mint to give it its consistency. The clock logo is believed to be based on a real timepiece in Rowntree’s head office.

Yorkie 64 million bars

A chunkier alternative to Cadbury’s Dairy Milk bar. Variations have included raisin and biscuit, honeycomb, white chocolate and mixed nuts. Aimed mainly at men, it was famous for its slogan ‘“It’s Not For Girls”.

Lion Bar 17 million bars

Wafer, caramel and cereal covered in milk chocolate. Launched in 1977, it was known in some areas as Big Cat until the late 1990s. Nestlé angered fans when it cut the size of the bars.

Drifter 37 million bars

Two biscuit wafer fingers layered with caramel and milk chocolate. Discontinued in 2007, it was relaunched in 2008 and was at one time promoted with the slogan “the chewy chocolate bar that you really have to get your teeth into”.

Matchmakers 30 million boxes

Launched in 1968 at one-third their current length, Matchmakers are brittle chocolate twigs available in mint, coffee and orange flavour. A Christmas favourite, its variations have included Brandysnap, Cappuccino, Coconut, Lemon and Irish Cream.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/the-reallife-willy-wonka-brian-sollitt-inventor-of-the-after-eight-dies-aged-74-8812937.html

Late Night in the Studio and Brick Lane Bagels

It is another late night for me in my studio, but tonight while trying to keep warm in the unheated space I actually finish building my altar pieces. Thank goodness for that as the painting bit is going to take some time to complete.

The larger altar pieces are ready.

 

Above are the medium and small pieces each hand built by myself.

 

I accidentally give myself a stigmata with my screwdriver while working. Rather significant given I am painting saints, don't you think? 

I finish at 11pm. The tubes reach their last stops at about 1am so as long as I get on a tube by midnight I will make it home. I step on a double decker bus instead and head for Brick Lane.

Brick Lane is a small winding street that makes its way from Algate East Station to near Liverpool Station. A lot of artists live in this area and it is known for its curries, retro clothing shops and Indian fabric shops. It is heaving with Indian eateries that are still serving people.

 

A little further on I hit the night clubs and pub/outdoor grills. 

 

I forge on further down Brick Lane so aptly named after the brick cobbled streets. For the Olympics someone decided it should be paved despite protests from all the shop owners. And it was paved.

 

I reach what I am looking for: the famous 24 hour bagel shop. There is a winding queue inside. The bagels are made fresh in the back.

 

The place is packed. I get my £1 decadent cream cheese bagel. There is no need to think about Food Safe here because none is observed whatsoever. But whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?

 

 I take a peek in the back where they are making bagels. They all invite me in to chat, take pictures and enthusiastically let me question them about their process. The weekends are their busiest times when they make about 2000 bagels a day. Whatever hour of the night or day I have come to this shop I have had to queue.

 

The process starts at the big mixer. Unfortunately there is nothing that gives reference in the photo to how big this mixer is. It is unusually wide and shallow and I could comfortably fit in it.

 

From there the dough gets cut into balls.

 

It is then fed into the rolling/donut shaping machine.

 

 You can see the dough going by in a blur. It rolled into a snake by the big metal paddle on the right which is then wrapped around the white round bit on the left to form the donut shape.

 

They then come out on the other end on a conveyer belt. These are stacked on wooden floured racks.

 

Next they are dumped into the boiling water and cooked for two minutes.  

 

In the draining sink beside the boiler the long wooden planks are laid out.

 

The boiled bagels are dumped out onto the boards and briefly hosed down to cool them off slightly or to stop them cooking perhaps.

 

The boards are then each slid length-wise into the deep oven and left there while the bagels bake on top. I am told this is a traditional Polish/Jewish method.

 

Once the top is a bit dry and crisp to the touch the boards are flipped over and removed while the bagels are left in the oven browning on the second side. To get all these bagels out a big piece of plywood is slid underneath them and pulled out.

 

There is a bit of tussle over how to pose for the photo and who is to be holding the tray. 

 

Okay, back up a little bit so I can get you both in.

 

Perfect. I am fed bagels in the back and given a bag of hot ones fresh out of the oven.

 

Then each tray is dumped into a big basket between the kitchen and the shop where the women out front cut them and fill them.

 

And finally the shop. 

At this point I look at my watch and it reads 12:15am. I say good bye and walk as fast as my expanding 3-bagel-belly will allow. As I approach the tube I notice a lot of other people walking very quickly there as well. But alas, there is an announcement that the last train has already departed from this station. It is now 12:35am. 

It is Night Bus time. London's Tube and day bus routes may shut down at night but you are never stranded. All through the night the night buses run. They run on different routes and times than the day ones. You can get places a lot faster at night on buses. From Trafalgar Square I can take Night Bus N87 all the way to my house in 30 minutes. This route just doesn't exist in the day and it actually takes longer on the tube. The buses seem to directly hook up all the outlying areas with the city centre. The roads are also quieter at this hour. 

I have two buses to catch as I am not quite in the city centre. I am standing in East London. The buses and streets are very busy despite the hour. The seats are all taken on the first bus and there are many people standing. London is a 24 hour city. 

I make it to my transfer bus depot and get on the N87. Somewhere along the line we pick up a group of inebriated friends. One vomits on the bus and we are all kicked off. All of us! The entire bus. Thankfully another bus comes shortly and I am home at 2:30am. Excellent! Another good day.

Day 9: A Florence Morning & Food Market

I have one more morning in Florence before we leave. At 7:30am there is a morning mass with the small handful of monks at San Miniato, the monastery/church nearby. We get up early and head over to hear the echoing chants. It is so peaceful and I spend the time studying the altar piece and the art work in the church.
As we come out into the morning we are created by the city of Florence.

 We arrive in the streets of the city centre just as the rain begins.

 Ponte Vecchio is stunning even in the wet.

We scurry through streets and when the rain really pelts it down we nip into a coffee shop and get a pastry, cappuccino and hot chocolate. I am still loving the city.

 Thankfully our next activity is to climb the Duomo which will keep us out of the rain for a short while. At the bottom the sign reads a warning of the 436 steps ahead.

 The first part of the church consist of a winding staircase going straight up. Once at the bottom of the dome itself you take a further staircase between two layers of the dome that curves around to the top (pictured above).
"The dome was built between 1420 and 1436 to a design by Filippo Brunelleschi. Taking his inspiration from Rome's Pantheon, Brunelleschi arrived at an innovative engineering solution of a distinctive octagonal shape of inner and outer concentric domes resting on the drum of the cathedral rather than the roof itself, allowing artist to build from the ground up without needing a wooden support frame. Over 4 million bricks were used in the construction, all of them laid in consecutive rings in horizontal courses using a vertical herringbone pattern. The final product is 91m high and 45.5m wide." (Lonely Planet's, Florence & Tuscany)

 From the top the view is amazing with Florence's red tiled roofs. I can see the San Lorenzo dome which is at the end of the street where I lived.

 From this direction you can see Piazza della Republica.

If you look on the hill at the white church to the right of the towering Palazzo Vecchio you can see San Miniato where we began our morning.

What an amazing view.

But a lot of graffiti.

We begin our long descent down the dome and then onto the regular stairs.

 We get up so close to the painted dome that from far away looks full of minute detail. From up close it is extremely loose, but well executed.  

We make it down and look back up to the white little pinnacle at the top that where we stood. 

 We are off again as I want to reach the Mercato Centrale before it closes for the day at 2pm. It was also a block away from where I lived and as a student.

 But first a quick look at the Baptistry.

The gilded bronze bas-relief covering the doors on the eastern entrance of the Baptistry were designed by Lorenzo Ghiberti who jointly won a 1401 competition involving the greatest artists of the day for the honour of undertaking the task. His co-winner was Filippo Brunelleschi, who was so annoyed at not winning outright that he withdrew from the project. Both entries can be viewed at the a museum in Florence (sorry, forgot which one).

The doors are cast in a single piece. I think this panel is depicting Joseph being sold into slavery.

we pass by the front of the Duomo.

 The rain is starting up again.

 We walk quickly through the wet streets.

 And in through the doors of the Mercato Centrale (Central Market).  

 There are a few places that I remember and specifically want to go in the market. First we head to the fresh pasta place where we watch the pasta being made. Marni, another student used to get us fresh pasta for lunch here and I would bake fresh corn bread.

It surprises me to see produce stalls on the lower floor. The last time I was here the large ground level was reserved exclusively for pastas, cheeses, meats, oils, and all your dry ingredients. The upper floor was all produce.

 I ask the vegetable vendor if it is just the low season. He tells me the upper floor has been closed for 3 years now. That means the market has shrunk to half the size it once was. I ask him if it is because of the large trend in Supermarkets. I am not sure he understands the question. Above is a dried fruit, wine and oil stall.

 I am sad that I won't be able to go upstairs to the older man that I went to every other day to get my produce. There are other changes I notice in Italy as well. The currency is no longer the Lira (but instead the Euro) and I wonder at how our globalisation effects the uniqueness of cultures.

Around the corner and beside the fresh pasta stall is where I always bought my bread. It was normal for the Italians to not speak English to foreigners and if they did they didn't let on until you tried to speak quite a bit of Italian first. Sometimes this could take months to strike up a camaraderie. This was the case with my baker. After at least half a year he finally asked me where I was from as I was now a regular. When I said I came from Vancouver he got excited and said he had been there and had a cousin who lived there. But his stall today is low in stock and no one is there. I take this picture and keep wandering.

 What I notice about Italy now is that people won't even bother trying to speak Italian to you even if you start out speaking it. They just revert right to English. I notice supermarkets throughout Europe more and more stocking the same generic global brands. I notice little things slipping that would have been such a trademark of cultures. The Florentines were proud when I lived here they wouldn't swerve on the sidewalk to let you pass. Nor would anyone think to pick up their dog shit.

 It just seems easier to get around and do everything abroad as a foreigner now, which I don't think is necessarily a good thing. I think we should be made to work a bit to get into a culture, to understand another view point.
(Above is Pasta Fresca, Produzione Propria, Interno Mercato Centrale, Firenze, Tel: 2302408). 

 So what has changed? When I was here before it was pre-internet, pre-mobile phone, pre-emails. To call home I went to the end of my street and dialled collect to Canada. We didn't even have a house phone. With the combination of internet and extreme budget European flights, are we quickly losing the uniqueness of our individual countries? Or is it a good thing that more people can move about globally with less hassle?

 I feel sad when I see the changes in Florence. I am sad that it probably won't be long before the market is no longer selling food and will only sell what a lot of markets now sell; cheaply made goods in factories with substandard human rights. Nothing unique. Nothing regional. Just generic stuff…garbage really. Or maybe the market will just close.

Well, while I am here I am going to really enjoy this one level of the market.

 I head over to the cheese counter. I remember coming to Italy having only ever eaten that sprinkle Kraft cheese called parmesan. 

 I went to the market and bought a very small wedge of a Parmigiano wheel and the flavour shocked me. That experience repeated itself with a lot of food I was soon to discover. We buy part of a wedge of that cheese pictured above.

 Then we discovered this baker in the middle of the market. I remember buying chewy Tuscan bread (unsalted to go with a salty meal). My Italian/Canadian roommate, Ross, showed us how the Italians pour olive oil on a plate and a little pile of salt and dip the bread in each. Delicious! This stall also has the best tasting biscotti I have ever eaten. There are samples of all the flavours set out on the counter.

 All kinds of dried funghi.

 I am looking for a particular dried pasta this time as I remember having a laugh discovering it as a student. Yes, it is still here!

 Okay, back out into the rain. Nigel, come on…one more look at my street.

 And the butcher with the dead pigs dressed up and posing is still there.

 Are they taxidermy?

 Via del Melaranchio.

 My old door.

 I am sure I have the right house. I remember our landlord was something like Pagliai.

 We head back up the hill to the campground.

 This is a shot of Camping Michelangelo from Piazzale Michelangelo. Truly an olive grove that hides everything from above. In the camp it is a bit gravely and well used.

 We break open our market haul for Nigel's birthday: Tuscan bread, olive oil, biscotti, parmesan cheese, grapes, fresh pasta, peppers, tomatoes, basil and pastry.

 When can we eat it????

 Now!

 A view from the campsite.

 We are off on our trail to reach the Cinque Terre region near the border of the south of France.

 The directions to the next campsite we are looking for are vague and we wonder where on earth we are going after a long stretch on an unpaved road.

 We arrive at Camping Lago Le Tamerici near Pisa which bills itself as an agri-tourism site. It is really hyped up to be amazing in our catalogue and although there were some pluses, we weighed the cons heavily against them.

 Pros: it had a nice little lake it is situated on.

 There are paddle boats that we can use for free.

 Con: other than the one kayak the paddle boats have holes that filled with water and soaked your bottom.

 The site is still yet to grow into itself. There are a lot of young trees and plants that will be beautiful in about 10 years, but right now it is a bit like being in the middle of farms. In fact we are surrounded by farms.

Cons: being in the middle of a farm means that the flies are horrendous and you can't sit outside for long. That large electrical wire and tower you see behind our van is extremely close and we can hear it buzzing and crackling all night long sending its cancer rays our way. The toilet block is made of the cheapest prefabricated particle board and completely falling apart despite the site being billed as new. Some of it smells like sewage. The site has what is advertised as a lovely organic restaurant which is why we chose it to celebrate Nigel's birthday. When we arrived we learned it is only open 3 days a week. The shop is also closed and doesn't have much of the basics (basics that we could have picked up elsewhere had we been told we were driving miles down rubble roads). Also, there is no one there! We drive up to an office that is empty and just parked. Someone eventually came along briefly and says they are off again and any problems just ring the number on the window. With what phone? We all had foreign number plates at the site, so we don't have local mobiles.

Pros: It had a lot of nice free amenities that are extra like a lake and boats to use, lawn chairs, and an awning for most pitches.

Comparing the pros and cons we decide it is the most overrated campsite and our most disappointing experience. Did I mention it is right near the Pisa airport? Okay, that doesn't really bother us that much. Nigel just makes a verbal list of all the cheap airlines that will bring us to Pisa as all the planes fly in for landing.