The World’s Largest Chocolate Fountain

Photo: John Locher

In 2005, pastry chef Jean-Philippe Maury created this enormous 25-tiered chocolate fountain for the Bellagio hotel and casino in Las Vegas. It’s 27 feet tall and circulates 120 quarts of chocolate per minute:

It wasn’t, you see, quite as simple as constructing a waterfall.

“Water doesn’t change,” Maury said. “Chocolate is complicated.”

It must be at the proper temperature to flow properly, for starters. Then there’s the issue of the chocolate’s viscosity, which affects the flow. And the viscosity of chocolate changes with every little bit of moisture in the air.

“The envy of chocolate is humidity,” Maury said. With an increase in the humidity, cocoa butter and coconut oil must be added to the 2,100 pounds of chocolate in the tank. Maury takes viscosity readings every two or three days.

The 25 glass vessels from which the chocolate flows are each unique, and each handmade in Montreal. Maury and Oliver tested the system there for seven months.

Link via Gizmodo (where there are videos of the fountain)