Food Network Challenge: Chocolate Fantasy

They're having a challenge on the Food Network. It's called the chocolate fantasy challenge. As in many of the challenges they have on the show, the challenge in this episode is to build a fantasy tower of chocolate. The designs are beautiful and exciting, but what a waste of chocolate :)

One of the problems with chocolate is that it's temperamental. If you don't cool the chocolate at the right speed or to the right temperature you get brittle chocolate that may bend or break. Which really sucks in this challenge because it's 100+ degrees in the town where they're having the challenge. Also with all the lights and cameras it makes it harder to gauge what the temperature will be from one minute to the next. I guess that just makes it more challenging.

I wish they would have said more about the chocolate making techniques. They used molds and vinyl and one person even used tubes to try and create long tubes of chocolate (of course they broke and didn't end up in her final piece). I saw a lot of luster dust (colored pearl powder used to make chocolate look shiny). I'm actually still curious what they used in their airbrushes to color the chocolate with.

The theme was "dreams" and I thought they did a pretty good job with it, all things considered. I just wish you could eat them. But I bet all that golden stuff makes the chocolate taste terrible. :)

-c