World Pastry Forum Days 4-6: Chocolate Showpiece

In the showpiece workshop led by Stephane Treand, MOF, we just dove in and started creating. He offered us one core technique which was how to form your base sculpture. Start by having a theme or vision for where you want the sculpture to end up. Next sketch out the figure, and once satisfied, draw the figure on paper in the final size. Lay a second paper over the top - preferably a waxed butchers paper and pour a bit of tempered chocolate along the lines in the sketch. Remove the sketch paper so you can see it and press cut strips of poster board into the chocolate to hold the shape of your form.

Once the chocolate sets - which will be just minutes, then pour tempered chocolate to the depth that you want your final form.

This needs to rest preferably overnight. I was working with Sarah Kosikowski, the Executive Pastry Chef at Trump Tower in Chicago. She and I turned out to be a great team because we brought complementary skill sets. We busted out a bunch of molded garnish, purposefully making more than we would use because we wanted to have plenty of options when it came time for assembly. I started carving away at our chocolate figure while Sarah made oodles of flower petals. My goal was to do as my old high school art teachers used to say - its not just a matter of what you add on, but what you take away, and so both Sarah and I were very aware of our negative spaces and details, as well as our relief sculpting.

But let me show some of Chef's creations (for the record, in the time it took us to make our one showpiece, Chef created eight or ten...I lost track). Here Chef inset a small DVD player into a chocolate frame decorated with metal bolts (all chocolate of course).

This concrete technique is a 50/50 mix of granulated sugar and tempered chocolate - its crucial that the chocolate be in temper or the seizing will be unusable. Chef then attached some chocolate bars dusted with bronze luster.

I'm going to have to ask more about this technique to figure out the coloring...maybe a classmate knows.

Here Chef created an oversized ring that he industrialized with bolts...again, all chocolate.

and the final piece with the sugar diamond mounted on top.

Here's granite that was done by two of Chef's volunteer assistants (Masumi and Jessie) - They started with a medium size bowl of white tempered chocolate, added a small amount of chef rubber blue sapphire for the lightest color- poured out 1/3 to crystalize. Added more blue sapphire for the next color - poured out 1/3 to crystalize, added more blue and red for final purple color. Once all of the chocolate was fully crystallized they pulsed each color and some dark chocolate separately. Melted cocoa butter, added white diamond color and mixed by hand. Next day the block was evened out on a warm marble and buffed with a dry cloth. They used a foam core mold made with duct tape. I like this pic because you see the chocolate granite in front of the real granite. In the end, mix the chopped pieces with cocoa butter and pour into your mold. Rap the air bubbles out and let set.

A few more of Chef's showpieces:

Tyler's favorite...look at the detail - even the Guess logo embossed in the heel.

I'll post my sculpture in the next post.