[paul.fr]

here are two nice bars of chocolate, but how do they get the bubbles in there?

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[elegantlywasted]

Well Crunchies are sponge toffee dipped in chocolate, and sponge toffee is naturally, well spongy. As for Aero's I don't know maybe they blast the chocolate with an air hose.

[JimBob]

My grandmother used dynamite

[lyner]

They have a supply of  bubbles, imported from the Far East. To keep them intact and tasting right, the bubbles are already chocolate coated. All that remains is to embed them in normal chocolate.
I though everyone knew that.

[Alandriel]

Far East ?!?! Why the far east??

I mean, you know, all really good things come from Switzerland (and Belgium I might add - yes, believe it or not even *I* after much trial and tribulation have come to the conclusion that Belgian chocolates under certain quite RARE circumstances I might quantify surpass their Swiss counterpars..... but that's all really a totally different story ...)
 
It's all very much like Swiss cheese you see ~ we've been at it for centuries.

And we're NOT telling how.

The Far Eastern varieties do not even come close to the quality of our bubbles - cheese, chocolate or otherwise

Far East.... grumble.... copy cats.... grumble...


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[lyner]

But the far eastern bubbles are much smaller and  cheaper to produce.  Hence, you find them in mass produced chocolate.
Nano bubbles are to be the next 'big ' thing.

[techmind]

here are two nice bars of chocolate, but how do they get the bubbles in there?

I'm pretty sure the bubbles in Crunchie (the centre is an artificial sugar honeycomb) are created by some kind of acid-bicarbonate reaction.

See Wikipedia (sponge_toffee):

Sponge toffee is a sugary confection with a light, rigid, foam-like texture.

It has many regional names including: honeycomb toffee, cinder toffee in Britain, puff candy in Scotland, hokey pokey in New Zealand, sponge candy in Erie, Pennsylvania, and Buffalo, New York, or occasionally sea foam in Washington, Oregon, California and Michigan.

The main ingredients are typically brown sugar, corn syrup, and baking soda, plus an acid such as vinegar. The baking soda and acid react to form carbon dioxide which is trapped in the highly viscous mixture. The lattice structure is formed while sugar is liquid and then sets hard.

The bubbles in Aero and Whisper (on limited special-edition re-release in the UK at the moment) I think are injected somehow... I've read it within the past month, but can't remeber the details.

According to Wikipedia (Aero):

According to the entry in the patent database, Aero bars are formed by a method involving chocolate in a liquid state on the verge of solidifying. Air is run through the chocolate with a vacuum as it cools (in the form of many very small bubbles), resulting in evenly distributed bubbles throughout the bar and a honeycomb-like texture.

The exact procedure for making the bubbles is a closely guarded secret. The question of how the bubbles are so evenly distributed throughout the chocolate was the subject of a question in one issue of New Scientist, which made it into the compendium of readers' questions Does Anything Eat Wasps?. A spokesperson for Nestlé provided some clues but there has been no definitive answer.[citation needed]

Wikipedia (Wispa):

The tiny bubbles within the chocolate are formed by aerating the molten chocolate with gas, typically carbon dioxide or nitrogen while at a low pressure which causes microscopic gas bubbles to form within the liquid. The liquid is then brought up to atmospheric pressure as it cools, causing the gas pockets to expand and become trapped in the chocolate.[9]

See also http://www.foodnavigator.com/news/ng.asp?id=61301-chocolate-bubbles-gas

[lyner]

acid-bicarbonate reaction.

This is a well known demo for kids in school. It produces half decent honeycomb crunchie toffee.
A mixture of sugar and baking powder, heated over a bunsen. You need to follow the recipe closely.
Temperature and time are a bit critical if you want to avoid sticky toffee or carbon to result but it is quite impressive and the kids get to eat it.

[lyner]

The exact procedure for making the bubbles is a closely guarded secret.

So they won't tell you the source of their imported bubbles eh?

[paul.fr]

I think there was almost an answer in there...somewhere!

More importantly, was there ever a British bubble industry? what was the cause of it's demise?

[neilep]

Do they get people like me to sit in vats of just melted chocolate and fart in it ?

[Bored chemist]

Just for the record (and to distract attention form the last post) there's no need to add an acid to the mixture to get bubbles. The hot sugar syrup will decompose the bicarbonate generating CO2. On the other hand many recipes for toffe contain an acid of some sort to help catalyse the inversion of the sucrose to glucose and fructose.

[JimBob]

Oh really now. Bicarbonate and all? Everyone knows that chocolate bubbles are caused by fairies farts with the blessings of Elves who make the chocolate in large copper vats in Sherwood Forest. Get real folks, this is a SCIENCE forum.