He put a goddamn light in the chocolate lighthouse!!!!
If you liked this, check out School of Chocolate! It’s his show on Netflix and personally it’s my new favorite format of food competition— you’ll probably see why when you watch the first episode.
[image description: an Instagram story from Amaury Guichon (the “Chocolate Guy”), which shows a side-by-side comparison of him in 2007 vs him now (2022). the 2007 picture shows him, significantly younger, standing next to and pointing at a small sculpture of an octopus attacking a ship. the 2022 picture shows him now, standing next to and pointing at a massive sculpture of a kraken holding a large anchor. the second sculpture is roughly three to four times the size of the first one, and finished to a much higher degree of quality. end ID]
okay so i often watch these chocolate guy videos and think to myself “what is the point of making this out of chocolate? modeling chocolate is reportedly disgusting, this is not really intended for consumption, why doesn’t he just make it out of clay or something”
but watching this video i FINALLY realized.
chocolate is the only sculpture medium that you can melt and then freeze for effect without some serious equipment.
like. the process of letting the chocolate drip down over the water balloon? yeah that chocolate only needs to be, like, a little over 100F/38C. that’s a touchable temperature, that’s something that you can put your fingers in without burning them off. and then it freezes again at about room temperature! and granted you want the ambient environment a little colder than room temperature, because otherwise the heat from your hands will start to melt it, but again, being able to melt this medium with your hands isabonus.
clay doesn’t melt. you can make it liquid-y by adding water, but that doesn’t harden up again afterwards, or when it does, it’s EXTREMELY fragile. plastic melts, but at pretty high temperatures that can be dangerous to handle, and it’s also really easy to burn and will release toxic gases when it does burn. metal melts, but that’s obviously even HOTTER and MORE dangerous. wood doesn’t melt. stone technically melts but like. good luck with that one.
chocolate melts at a reasonable, human-touchable temperature and freezes again at room temperature, which means you can make solid shapes from dripping or pouring melted chocolate and letting it harden.
the only other sculpting medium i know that does that is wax, and i think wax is generally too soft/malleable overall for the kind of large structures that this guy makes.
so i finally, FINALLY fucking get why he does this shit in chocolate oh my god.
[image description: an Instagram story from Amaury Guichon (the “Chocolate Guy”), which shows a side-by-side comparison of him in 2007 vs him now (2022). the 2007 picture shows him, significantly younger, standing next to and pointing at a small sculpture of an octopus attacking a ship. the 2022 picture shows him now, standing next to and pointing at a massive sculpture of a kraken holding a large anchor. the second sculpture is roughly three to four times the size of the first one, and finished to a much higher degree of quality. end ID]
At some point he’s going to make a human out of chocolate and the cocoa homunculus will stand, open his mouth and sing a song that starts the Rapture
All of these are likely for PR purposes. Big sculptures are likely melted back into regular chocolate shortly after being made, while the smaller deserts could be just sold at his shop.
