Amaury Guichon

“I always have to reassure myself, just trust the process of what you're doing and you will accomplish it.”

“Chocolate itself is extremely dry. It's about 99.9% dry. That's why you can keep it for a long time and it doesn't need to be refrigerated, compared to an actual pastry.”

“Obviously interactive chocolate is very hard to conceive, and chocolate is so fragile as a medium itself, and so it can be very hard to get things moving. But I'm always up for a challenge.”

“I was always passionate about pastry, and I pretty much sacrificed a big chunk of my life to it. I still do. But I was never really content and fulfilled until I started teaching and sharing my passion with others.”

“I have high respect for chocolate.”

“Ever since I was able to have voice in this industry, I've been strongly showing the beauty and the diversity and everything that it takes to make desserts - no matter what type you do.”

“Even with the full knowledge of it, you need to work with chocolates for an extended period of time to have a full understanding. And I still surprise myself and discover new things every time I work with it.”

“From the wood lathe to the pottery wheel to the simple drill, I borrow a lot of equipment and ideas from the world of clay, from woodworking, and sometimes from masonry.”

“When I started, every trade field, every job that required working with your hands, was looked down upon, at least in Europe, because if you worked with your hands, it meant that you were not able to work with your head.”

“Sometimes people see that I'm doing sculpture with chocolate, and they think I'm playing with food and that it's wasteful. It's a small percentage of the audience that feels that way, thankfully, and what they don't realize is that I have the greatest respect for chocolate and the people who produce it.”

“You can set free your imagination and develop amazing work inspired by a flavour, an ingredient or an idea.”

“Sometimes I do get extremely tired and I don't give myself enough room to recoup because social media is calling and I feel that I can never stop. But if I'm not being productive, I feel guilty.”

“I don't really have a family anymore.”

“I do go to the gym regularly but I hate every aspect of it. I have to do it for my mental health and my physical health.”

“There is the fun and technical, yet more decoration purpose, aspect of the chocolate. It's usually what people are the most attracted to. But there is a whole different dimension, as far as structural, or if we talk even, like, the use of chocolate into edible products like chocolate bars, chocolate mousse, et cetera.”

“I was deemed not good enough to pursue a general field, so I was asked to choose a trade: mason, woodwork, hair stylist, electrician or chef, and I picked chef. Pastry and chocolate was my choice, but it was really like pulling a number out of a hat. It took me a few years to learn that it does require a lot of knowledge and skill.”

“In order to create things that are outside of the normal realm of chocolate, I need to use tools that also come from outside the world of chocolate.”

“There were very little role models for me. Celebrity pastry chefs just didn't exist. I now have a responsibility to help inspire the youth that are also feeling lost.”

“I adore the fact that creativity in pastry is not restricted by rules.”

“You just need to take a look at my work to understand that I borrow and adapt an incredible amount of techniques from many different fields.”