‘They had to be the best chocolates in the world – and I took that seriously’
From hoverchocs that make you fly to a molten vat for swimming in, Gabriella Cugno reveals how Wonka’s extraordinary confections were made.
In the kitchen of a London hotel, I am holding a 1/16in metal tube over a hairdryer, trying desperately not to singe my fingertips. The piping hot tube will serve as a kind of chocolate hole punch. Before me: six perfect chocolate wings no bigger than a thumbnail, each one spray-painted a shimmering turquoise.
Gabriella Cugno, a master chocolatier, watches on, instructing me to pierce the wings with careful confidence, and then to take a thin paintbrush and dab powdered gold leaf around the edges of the holes. Next, I’m to take a dotter tool, dip it into melted raw cocoa butter dyed Barbie pink, and place tiny pink dots in between the gold rings. To my surprise, within a couple of minutes I’ve made something that doesn’t look a million miles away from a hoverchoc. And if you don’t yet know what a hoverchoc is, you’re about to find out.