Chantry Year 8 students Miriam and Stephanie, who recently won the Royal Society of Chemistry prize at the National Science and Engineering Competition, have just taken part in a special visit to York as part of their prize. They were accompanied by Dr Jackson and Lucy Tetley of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

The girls began their day in York by visiting the Nestlé Product Technology Centre for Confectionary, where the company’s global confectionary products are created and tested. Nestlé’s other facility in York is the main producer of Kit Kat for the UK market.

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The prize winners began by taking a tour of the Centre where they were shown how Kit Kat wafers were mixed and pressed using a special machine. The wafers, usually buried deep inside a chocolate coating, are specially designed for strength and crunchiness. They were then shown how the chocolate is added to Kit Kat moulds and the final chocolate bars are wrapped. In another room they saw how Milky Bars were blended.

The girls then visited the research labs, where they saw how scientists test the different products for smell, moisture and particle size. The tour of Nestlé concluded with a bon bon making masterclass from resident chef Florian. Everyone was very impressed with the expert way Florian worked with the sugar syrup when creating the bon bons. The girls were given a sample of Nestlé confectionary products in a goody bag.

We are very grateful to Nestlé’s Liz Young and her colleagues for hosting the behind the scenes visit.

After a bite of lunch the girls visited The York Chocolate Story in the heart of the city. The guided tour showed how chocolate has evolved through the years from a basic drink made by the Aztecs hundreds of years ago to the popular brands we know and love today. Miriam and Stephanie sampled various styles of chocolate and were shown how to test the quality of chocolate. At the end of the Chocolate Story the girls moulded and decorated their own lollies from white chocolate.

Speaking about the visit Miriam said: “Visiting Nestlé was great. Everyone was so welcoming and I learnt a lot about how sweets are made. Making the sweets with Florian was good fun.”

Stephanie added: “I really enjoyed visiting Nestlé because the staff were so friendly. I thought the tour was really interesting, particularly when we saw how the Kit Kats were made. My favourite part was making the sweets, because there were lots of different ways we could shape them.”

We would like to thank the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Lucy Tetley for helping to organise this very special and memorable day.