Tootsie Roll is brand of chewable candy that is being manufactured in United States for over a hundred years since 1896. Tootsie Roll Industries, the manufacturer of Tootsie Roll is located in Illinois, Chicago.
Tootsie Rolls became the first candy that was available for a penny and individually wrapped.
The founder of Tootsie Roll was Leo Hirschfeld, who was an immigrant to United States from Austria. In 1896, he started his candy business in a little shop in New York City. Leo Hirschfeld was looking for a chocolate that would stand the heat and not melt easily, which would be an artificial and economic alternative to the traditional chocolate that was available back then. He named his new found candy after the nickname given to his daughter i.e. Tootsie. During the Second World War, Tootsie Rolls turned to be a standard portion of the American soldier's ration on field, which owed due to the candy's hardiness to survive in variety of climatic conditions.
According to the Tootsie Roll website, the recipe for Tootsie Roll today is still the same as back in the time of Leo Hirschfeld. This original recipe involves adding to the new batch from the previous day's preparation. The company as of today makes 64 million Tootsie Rolls a day thus making Tootsie Roll Industries the world's largest candy manufacturing company.
The traditional chocolate Tootsie Roll is made using corn syrup, sugar, condensed milk, soybean oil, artificial cocoa flavoring, soy lecithin and whey. Tootsie Rolls became kosher certified in 2009 by the Jewish Orthodox Union.
Along with the traditional cocoa Tootsie flavored roll, many new flavors have now come in and as these are mainly fruit flavors, they have been introduced as Tootsie Fruit Rolls. The flavors of these are as follows: orange which is wrapped in an orange wrapper, cherry wrapped in a red wrapper, vanilla which is wrapped in blue wrapper, lime that comes in a green wrapper and lemon comes in yellow wrapper.
So, this is the famous classic American candy called Tootsie Roll, starting right from 1896 in a little shop in New York City and coming to be the largest candy producer in the world today.
