How to make puffed rice

I'm really into making stuff from scratch, so I thought it might be fun to make my own puffed rice... to stick into chocolate or something. So I went in search of a recipe. The result left me wondering what possesses human beings to do what they do and how one could make lemonade when life hands you a lemon.

Turns out that a biochemist back in the early 1900s decided that it might be fun to stuff an old Spanish-American War cannon with rice and shoot it off. :confused: Result: yummy puffed rice.

Now to find me a Spanish-American War cannon. Think my neighbors will mind? :talk:

It was Alexander Anderson of the University of Minnesota who decided to stuff the rice down the cannon. Later, he invented and patented a cannon for that specific purpose. He had a company called the Anderson Puffed Rice Company. Still trying to figure out what would possess him to stuff the rice down the cannon in the first place and then decide that the result was marketable. All very remarkable indeed. :)