Derek Carr, Darren Waller featured in chocolate Raiders display
The next time you see Derek Carr, the Raiders quarterback may look a little sweeter.
Pastry chefs at the Patisserie at Aria resort have recreated the football star as a 6- foot-3-inch sculpture made almost entirely of chocolate.
“Chocolate Derek Carr” will make his public debut at the patisserie on Sept. 13 when the pastry chefs present an entire Raiders display with a four-foot-wide Allegiant Stadium, an Al Davis Memorial torch made of chocolate, several black-and-silver cakes and a chocolate Darren Waller sculpture.
To create the Carr sculpture, Assistant Pastry Chef Andy Madrid says chefs started with a wooden skeleton and covered it with cake and 200 pounds of chocolate, 40 pounds of fondant and more than 100 pounds of sugar.
“Our cake decorator has been working on him for about two weeks,” says Madrid. “We still need to get a jersey number on him and his name on there. The decorator has been working nonstop to get his shoelaces and the wrinkles on his pants and making his helmet. It’s an ongoing project.”
On Friday, Madrid worked on creating the orange flames to sit inside the four-foot-tall chocolate torch. She heated and pulled the orange sugar into spheres and then used a hand pump to force air into the sugar and pull it into long, twisted shapes.
Other chefs worked on decorating styrofoam bases with elaborate molded chocolate and embossed fondant, which were stacked to form multi-tiered cakes.
“When it comes to a big project like this, we just have different people who have many different talents,” says Madrid. “It’s a lot of fun to work on creative projects like this.”
The patisserie will also sell Raiders-inspired baked goods like football-shaped pastries and chocolates, says Madrid.
The sweet sculptures will be on display starting Sept. 13 to celebrate the Raiders’ season opener when they host the Ravens for Monday Night Football.
Contact Janna Karel at jkarel@reviewjournal.com. Follow @jannainprogress on Twitter.
