Chocolate Showpiece

My Chocolate Showpiece

For our Chocolate 2 exam, we have to make a showpiece. The class theme was "movies." I decided to take that literally and do a general movie-themed piece rather than a piece based on a specific movie. I made a classic film reel and film strips with classic movie stills.

I made the outside pieces of the reel by molding two identical pieces of dark chocolate using a tart ring and small rings made of acetate to block off the holes (I could have used a cookie cutter to cut out the holes at the exact right moment, but I am not convinced that that way would have been easier.) I lightly brushed the disk that I was using as the front of the film reel with silver luster dust to give it a slightly metallic look. The inside part (that would hold the film) is a very thick block of unsweetened chocolate that I molded in a cake ring. Once it was hardened, I brushed this with more unsweetened chocolate to make a rough texture of concentric circles, reminiscent of the edge of film in a reel. I glued the two outside pieces to the inside piece--very carefully to ensure that it stands up straight. 

I molded a small disk for the base and glued the film reel to it. That was surprisingly easy, because the film reel could stand up on its own. All I had to do was very slightly melt the bottom of the reel so that it didn't roll and then use tempered chocolate to glue it onto the base.

I made the curved piece of film by painting white chocolate onto an acetate strip and then, once it was tacky, covered the whole strip in dark chocolate. Once that whole thing was at the cutting point I curved it around different sized cake rings and let it harden and painted white chocolate squares on the plain side. Then I peeled off the acetate and with quite a bit of difficulty (because it was so fragile and because chocolate melts when you hold it) I glued it to the film reel sticking straight up.

Finally, I had to make the small film strips. When I made the long piece, I made some short, wider pieces of chocolate spread on acetate. After I peeled off the acetate, I carefully brushed them with a dry pastry brush and then painted--literally, I used a paint brush--white chocolate on to make the frames and designs of the stills. I'm not terribly good with a paint brush and real paint on a piece of paper, and chocolate is harder to work with (it's quite thick, can harden onto the brush while you are using it, and you have to have the temperature exactly right) and paint onto (if you hold it, it melts) so they aren't quite so perfect, but I like them anyway!

Can you guess what the stills are depicting? (Answers on the next post.)