Shot from Guns

When I was a child, there was this breakfast cereal called "Puffed Rice". Its marketing line was: "Shot from Guns". Of course, anything that had to do with guns was popular with small boys(and still is). But it was a miserable cereal with no flavor until you dumped a lot of sugar on it.

Taiwan still has something similar used as a sugar delivery vehicle. The Chinese name translates into something like Exploded Rice Fragrance. Here's the shop sign:

This is one of the many street vendors selling their speicalties and setting up each day, maybe moving from location to location.

Here is the equipment for exploding the rice, a cast iron canon is rotated over a gas burner but an airtight lid pressurizes the raw rice kernels inside. Then at a specific time the lid is wacked off with a hammer. The sudden reduction in pressure expands the kernels to their "puffed" state. It is very exciting to watch, looks very dangerous. In the picture below the cannon is being loaded.

Once the puffed rice is out, it mixed with a sugary syrup, usually the syrup has a flavoring like peanuts, sesame, ...

Then the sticky mess is flattened and cut into squares about the size of candy bars(industrial size rolling pin).

Before the lid is knocked off the canoneer yells out the equivalent of "Fire in the Hole"

 

I'm sure the cereal of old was made similarly but not in such small batches.