Chocolate Showpieces

It’s Friday?!? I’m actually not quite sure how I made it through this week with particularly little sleep on top of class, “Production” (a requirement for graduation), work at the patisserie, going to the gym, and attempting to maintain my growing social life. Time is flying by, and I’m just trying to keep up!

This week we each crafted our own chocolate showpiece. We had been working with chocolate for the previous 2 weeks, so by the end of this week, I am feeling more and more comfortable handling chocolate. We started on Monday by constructing the base of the showpiece: casting (pouring tempered chocolate) into several ring molds, domes, disks, and bowls. The base must be extremely sturdy in order to support the weight of everything on top. We also made white chocolate curls of all shapes and sizes by rolling and smoothing them with our hands, and then allowing to set in the chocolate cooler.

Next, we created my favorite part of the showpiece, which was the rose. To make it, we cast some chocolate onto the marble and then used a special scraping tool to scrape long petals and then form them into the proper shape. Somehow, mine ended up being enormously larger than most others, but I did really like how it turned out in the end!

Chocolate rose I formed and sprayed red

We made another flower out of white chocolate with some yellow dye, and formed the dark chocolate petals using the back of our knife to form the petals. We also made green chocolate leaves and chocolate ribbons with different colored cocoa butter.

Back side of the showpiece

We sprayed the base and the tall “swoosh” a dark, matte black color to contrast the white chocolate curls, and then also sprayed our roses red, and our flowers light green. Then came time to assemble! The piece came together relatively quickly with a little chocolate “glue” and some cold spray. It’s definitely important to glue everything down really well to make sure everything is set before you attempt to move it (spoiler: I found this out firsthand on Jackson Street). It was really cool to see the slight variations and personal touches on everyone’s showpiece. We all followed the same general style, but we did have some creative freedom with the placement and shape of our curls, leaves, ribbons, and the size, color, and shape of our flowers.

Finished product

After class it became apparent that getting this massive but delicate, 20-pound showpiece home in this Chicago humidity was not going to be an easy feat. I split an Uber home with a classmate, and just getting into the car proved to be a sad, yet hilarious moment in my life. We stepped outside the school and instantly became street entertainment for passersby as they gawked at our pieces AND at us, as we struggled to keep everything on straight. Another friend followed us out the Uber to open the door, and as I’m walking across Jackson street, my huge rose snapped off completely from my showpiece and fell right into my chest (staining my shirt and white shorts…okay, that was poor planning on my part). Luckily, my friend was there to grab it, but he picks it up while it’s crumbling to pieces and the chocolate is instantly melting in the heat, and the red dye is completely staining his hands, looking like he was just a part of some crazy murder. The funniest part in all this though, is as we’re desperately trying to manage the rest of the showpiece, some guy yells at me, “HEY!! HEY!!! YOU DROPPED SOMETHING!!!!!!!” ….like really and seriously trying to get my attention to alert me that I dropped something …. I’m aware, thank you sir.

Anyway, at that point, my showpiece was hardly even worth attempting to save, so I bundled it all up and threw it in the garbage. It was surprisingly less upsetting than I would have thought. There’s not really much I was going to do with it aside from sit on our kitchen table, so it was a quick and easy goodbye. Overall, I’m really pleased with how it turned out! There are definitely pieces I would have liked to have been able to redo or try again, but now I’ll know for next time..which is actually next week! On Monday, we get to start over and do it all again, but this time with sugar! From what I hear, sugar showpieces are a whole different monster and come with completely different obstacles to navigate, especially with this humidity. I’m going to need some serious luck for that one!

In the meantime, I have some mega OxyCleaning to do, a lot of sleep to catch up on, some old friends to see (hey Mal!!), a mother to call, and some writing to finish that’s going to be published in a magazine! Lots going on, but all really fun. I’m at a really great place right now, and I’m loving sharing my experiences with you all!