A new flavor of Ho Hos makes the Philadelphia-produced snack cake even more popular than it already is. An intrepid reporter goes behind the scenes to get the story.

VICKI VALERIO / Inquirer

I'm not at all jealous of colleagues who recently returned from Iraq, where they were embedded with U.S. troops. Let them share their war stories.

I've just returned from a factory on Blue Grass Road in Northeast Philadelphia, where I watched a new flavor of Hostess Ho Hos - caramel chocolate - being produced right before my very eyes, not to mention my salivating tongue.

Don't scoff.

As a nation, we devour 200 million Ho Hos a year. So the significance of in-depth reporting on this subject cannot be underestimated.

Here I am, then, pulling into the visitors' parking lot just off Grant Avenue, showing my photo ID and being thoroughly questioned by security guards who want to know why in heaven's name a newspaper of this stature... well, you get the gist.

A sign outside reads Wonder-Hostess, but the 5,000-square-foot plant was built in 1964 by Horn & Hardart and later was the Acme supermarket chain's bakery until Hostess' parent, Kansas City-based Interstate Bakeries Corp., bought it in 1988.

Interstate, they'll have you know, is the largest producer of bread and cake in the country. But in the city of Philadelphia, it has a 11.5 percent market share vs. (what else?) Tastykake's 36 percent.

Inside these walls, 20 varieties of bread (sold under the Wonder, Beefsteak and Home Pride labels) and 13 kinds of rolls are made daily, plus Honey Buns and cinnamon, powdered, chocolate, big and little varieties of doughnuts. Devil Dogs and Twinkies are made at the company's Wayne, N.J., plant and distributed from here.

The Blue Grass Road plant is kosher, and kosher certification for caramel chocolate Ho Hos is pending.

No fewer than four workers are detached from their day's duties to escort me through the plant, where tours are normally taboo.

No doubt my colleagues who covered the Iraqi conflict wore helmets and bulletproof vests. For Operation Enduring Thighs, I don an unflattering white hair net before being embedded at the plant, where 3.2 million pounds of bread and cake are baked weekly.

As a journalist, you go where the job takes you.

I learn that the region served by this single factory (Philadelphia and its five surrounding counties, plus central and southern New Jersey, the rest of eastern and central Pennsylvania, all of Delaware and Maryland, and northern and western Virginia) is the No. 1 Ho Ho-consuming area in the country: 14.3 million Ho Hos a year.

Where do we find the time, I wonder aloud, to lead the nation in Ho Ho consumption, what with our devotion to cheesesteaks and soft pretzels?

Terry Fisher, plant general manager, declines to speculate. His only objective is to persuade Philadelphians to eat even more Ho Hos. His new weapon in that campaign is a layer of caramel alongside the already-yummy cream filling in the popular snack cake.

Caramel chocolate Ho Hos landed in stores on March 31. They've caught on so quickly that the 1.1 million shipped from this bakery for the launch were scarfed down in just three weeks, the company reports.

"I can't make enough," operations manager Bill Hagan says. "And I'm running the plant seven days a week."

Caramel Ho Hos were developed after testing 20 recipes, with various thicknesses of caramel and chocolate. I wish I could have been there for you during that process, dear reader, but I'm here now and I plan to make up for lost calories... er, time.

My guides lead me down a narrow iron staircase to the bakery entrance. Like a U.N. inspector, I plan to search the entire plant for goodies of mass consumption.

Joe Rebholz, who runs the bread production department, has worked here since 1988. He says the aroma of fresh-baked bread is intoxicating only for the first hour or so every day.

"Then," he says, "you get used to it."

Supervisors are required to taste-test products daily, so he gets his share.

Food and Drug Administration rules bar employees from eating on the production line. But the lunchroom shelves are filled daily with all manner of Hostess, Wonder, Drake's and Twinkies, and it's all-you-can-eat at break time.

Wheat bread is baked in 2,000-pound batches, the scent of which is heavenly to inhale but not superior to standing near ovens that spit out 800,000 Honey Buns. Remember what Einstein said about relativity.

At last we reach that distant section of the bakery where Ed Duffy, a 42-year-old single dad with 14 years on the job, is overseeing the production of 1,450 Ho Hos a minute.

Do workers in this quadrant seem especially cheerful? Maybe it's my glow.

First, chocolate cake batter is mixed and poured in thin strips onto a conveyor belt that glides into an oven the size of a city bus and the shape of an iron lung. There it bakes at 380 degrees for about 31/2 minutes (don't try this at home) and it comes out...

... down here, where it is turned upside down, like on a roller coaster at Hershey (you should pardon the expression) Park, and now it gets filled with caramel and cream.

Farther down the conveyor belt, a guillotine cuts the cake into smaller pieces. Another machine rolls the cake, and now it inches toward a waterfall, where it will be drenched in a 110-degree dark-chocolate coating.

But first, between the roller and the waterfall, workers have a few seconds to hand-roll any Ho Hos the machine may have missed. This is where I envision Lucy and Ethel working, should they somehow slip past screening in Personnel.

From the chocolate waterfall, the cakes are whooshed into a cooling tunnel for another 31/2 minutes. Then they're wrapped, packed and shipped out for their 21-day shelf life.

I can't speak for your shelves, but nothing chocolate lingers for 21 days on mine.

The Inquirer's strict ethics policy keeps me from taking bribes, of course, but as I leave the bakery I accept a few sample Ho Hos for the editors back in the newsroom. I hope all this chocolate and caramel won't distract them from seeng tht ths stry gts n th nwsper prprly.