- Joshua Cain is the executive pastry chef at Caribe Royale Orlando who built a chocolate train.
- He designed the "Caribe Royale North Pole Express" with two other people using his own molds.
- Here's what it took to build the train, as told to writer Molly O'Brien.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Joshua Cain, the 40-year-old executive pastry chef at Caribe Royale Orlando resort. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I've been in the hospitality industry for 26 years. As a kid, I spent a lot of time in the kitchen with my great aunt, who was the one in the family who made desserts. I always had a sweet tooth growing up, and I still do.
This is my first holiday display at Caribe Royale Orlando, but I have big plans for the future. I started planning the display six months before I actually did any work with the chocolate. I came up with the idea, went to our managing director and marketing director for their feedback, and then dove into research. I knew I wanted to build a train, so I looked at different designs online to get design inspiration.
The process of creating the train took a little over a month
Building the train took three people (myself, assistant pastry chef Jessica Bighma, and chocolatier Maria Sanchez) and about 1,000 hours of work total between us. The train is 32-feet long and made up of 1,600 pounds of chocolate. It took two weeks alone just to make the engine because of all the little details.
Everything literally started from the ground up. I partnered with a local craftsman to build aluminum tables that could support the weight of the display — the engine is heavy! Next, I spend a few weeks making molds of the wheels, rails, the railroad ties, and other details to make out of chocolate. I bought an actual metal rail and created a silicon mold from it so the train's chocolate rail would be true to form.
I have a vacuum forming machine that allows me to create a mold from a model that I sculpted out of clay. I put a plastic sheet into this form, heat it up, and it creates a vacuum around my model. Then I take the mold I created and use it to produce the chocolate pieces.
I made use of items that were already in my kitchen: For the larger wheels on the engine, I used the bottom of a frying pan to get the perfect dimensions. I also have pictures that I used as guidelines to try to keep as true to form as possible. I want people to look at it and say, "Wow, that's a steam locomotive."
In June, I reached out to my vendors to source the chocolate. I have a very good partnership with Valrhona Chocolate and their sister company Republica Del Cacao, who donated the chocolate we used for the train. After the chocolate arrived, molding started in October.
I don't even try to resist the temptation to eat the chocolate while I'm working
The whole time I'm working, I'm sampling. Chocolate is good for you! The chocolate I'm using is 71% dark chocolate, and it's amazing.
The train has been on display in the front lobby of our hotel since December 1 and will be up until January 3rd. Each day I like to go out and check on everything myself — sometimes I'll come up behind people and stand next to them and say something like, "Can you believe the whole thing is chocolate?"
There's a monitor behind the display showing a video of me and the process of making it — so just yesterday I had a guy turn to me and say, "Wait, you're the guy!" He took a selfie with me in front of the train and we talked about the process of building it. People are blown away and I have to reassure them that yes, it's made of chocolate.
Basically, the answer to all questions is 'chocolate'
It's built out of chocolate, it's glued with chocolate, we've even airbrushed with cocoa butter. There's nothing on that train that's not edible even though it's not going to be eaten.
Sometimes we do have people with a sweet tooth that get too close, and try to blame the kids — but it's never actually the kids. It's always the adults who try to reach over and break off a piece because they don't believe it's actually all chocolate.
With the train, we're planning to start a new holiday tradition at the hotel by adding on and making it bigger and bigger year after year. Until next year, we'll be storing it on property in a custom-built cage.
But it's also the beginning of something grander that I want to do — maybe we could even go for the world record for longest chocolate display one day.