Chocolate Showpiece

Today we completed our chocolate showpieces. I'm not sure you can get the scale from the picture, but it's about 18" tall. You'll notice the chocolate rose from my earlier post, which has now been placed on the showpiece. It has been sprayed with brown cocoa butter, then I painted around the edge with a little gold.

Everything you see on the showpiece is made of chocolate (dark chocolate, to be exact.) I made some other accent pieces out of milk chocolate, but I couldn't find a way to fit them into my design. The green twists on the side were made by spreading green, yellow, and white cocoa butter on a sheet of acetate, then spreading dark chocolate on top of that. Once the chocolate began to set, I cut the shape I wanted, then rolled it up into the spiral you see. When the chocolate is completely set, you remove the acetate wind up with the decoration you see in the picture.

It was interesting getting this home today. First, I had to hail a cab while holding onto this 20 lb. fragile showpiece. So the cabby says, "I guess I need to be careful driving, huh?" But he forgot all about that within 2 blocks, and it was all I could do to keep the showpiece together as we flew down Lake Shore Drive. But, I got it home in one piece.

Chef estimated that a showpiece like this would sell in the neighborhood of $250-300. Anybody want to buy a chocolate showpiece???