Today I Discovered Cadbury Flakes Don’t Melt In The Microwave

Chocolate is one of life’s greatest inventions. You can eat it whole, you can use it to flavour things, you can drink it and you can melt it into a deliciously sweet paste. But one chocolate bar defies this logic and today I discovered this. Yes, we’re talking about Cadbury’s Flake.

I loaded up TikTok for a quick (NB: It’s never quick) browse and stumbled upon a particularly obnoxious post. The user, Cian Twomey, alleged he was told by his girlfriend that there was one chocolate bar was able to resist a microwave melting: a Cadbury Flake. Twomey did not believe his girlfriend’s tale so he decided to test out the theory in a video because everything is content in 2020.

@mrciantwomey

The word on the street is it’s impossible to melt a flake ##fyp ##foryou ##flake

♬ original sound – mrciantwomey

Despite Twomey and my own reservations, by the end of the short video, he, and I, were proven wrong — the Flake did not melt. How?

It turns out, this is a known fact in some circles I clearly don’t frequent. BBC’s Science Focus explained the chocolate bar didn’t melt in a microwave because of the following reason:

“The [Flake’s] manufacturing process gives it a different arrangement of fat and cocoa solids, so the melting fat isn’t able to lubricate the cocoa particles to the point where they can flow,” the Science Focus article said.

The inability to melt didn’t apply to just microwaves, however. A Flake bar won’t melt in a bain marie either, according to Science Focus, and if you just keep zapping it in the microwave, it’ll eventually just burn.

So, the next time you need to melt chocolate for a recipe, do not pick up that random Flake bar in your pantry. A shame, really.

[referenced url=”https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2020/02/today-i-discovered-the-csiro-basically-invented-twisties/” thumb=”https://www.lifehacker.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2020/02/Twisties-410×231.jpg” title=”Today I Discovered The CSIRO Basically Invented Twisties” excerpt=”Australia’s scientific gem, the CSIRO, is responsible for a lot of great Australian inventions. Wifi, plastic banknotes, Aerogard and broccoli powder : all CSIRO. But there’s one invention the scientific agency had a hand that trumps them all (sorta) — Twisties.”]