Sugar Geek Show logo

menu icon
subscribe
search icon

Published on December 14, 2021 by · This post may contain affiliate links ·

Chocolate Ant Showpiece Tutorial

Skill level: Advanced

Ever wanted to learn how to create a free-standing edible showpiece made from just chocolate? Liz Marek breaks down how to create an enormous chocolate ant in this exciting tutorial.

In this course, you will learn how to create a giant ant featured in Liz's episode on Disney's Foodtastic series streaming on Disney+ made from tempered chocolate. Learn two different ways to make robot coupe, a moldable, chocolate medium that can be used like modeling chocolate. You will learn how to airbrush onto chocolate, something that can be very difficult to do with the oil-based nature of chocolate.

You will learn how to create the ant facial details, the antennae and eyes, along with the wings made from edible materials.

There's a lot to cover in this video, so let's get our tools together, and let's get started.

2:25:30 Minutes of Instruction

What You Will Learn

  • How to create an enormous ant showpiece made from tempered chocolate
  • Learn how to make two different kinds of robot coupe
  • How to make edible giant wings and how to airbrush with cocoa butter

Tutorial Chapters

  1. Scaling the ant 0:28
  2. Tempering the chocolate 6:46
  3. Pouring the chocolate 9:57
  4. Making wings from templates 12:32
  5. Making wings from templates 14:46
  6. Making sheet gelatin 16:25
  7. Pouring the wings 18:15
  8. Making the wings 21:10
  9. Putting the molded pieces together 25:56
  10. Shaping the body 30:56
  11. Connecting the body pieces 38:03
  12. Building up the body Pt. 1 50:30
  13. Smoothing down the chocolate 56:36
  14. Building up the body Pt. 2 1:05:01
  15. Smoothing the body Pt. 2 1:11:46
  16. Shining the body Pt. 1 1:16:07
  17. Making the legs Pt. 1 1:22:11
  18. How to make robot coupe 1:28:37
  19. Building the legs Pt. 2 1:30:16
  20. Cutting out the wings 1:34:16
  21. Painting the wings 1:36:20
  22. Building up the legs 1:40:51
  23. Smoothing the legs 1:44:49
  24. Shining the legs 1:48:30
  25. Building the body Pt. 3 1:48:50
  26. Setting up the airbrushing equipment 1:55:10
  27. Tempering the cocoa butter 2:02:43
  28. Painting the ant 2:04:25
  29. Adding the eyes 2:07:35
  30. Shining the ant Pt. 1 2:10:52
  31. Painting the ant Pt. 2 2:14:36
  32. Glossing the cocoa butter 2:17:42
  33. Shining the ant Pt. 3 2:19:07
  34. Putting it all together 2:21:55
  35. Finishing touches 2:24:12

More Course Preview

About Liz Marek

Liz Marek is a professional cake artist and recipe developer who has been teaching baking and cake decorating since 2008. She founded Artisan Cake Company in Portland, Oregon in 2009 and now runs Sugar Geek Show, where she publishes kitchen-tested recipes, food science explanations, and step-by-step tutorials.

Liz is best known for sculpted and hyperrealistic cakes. She won Netflix's Is It Cake? Holiday 2 in 2025 with a hyperrealistic Santa cake, and has competed on and won Food Network cake competitions. Cake Masters Magazine named her one of the top 10 cake artists in 2017. She is the author of Artisan Cake Company's Visual Guide to Cake Decorating and a graduate of the Oregon Culinary Institute.

Her focus is on explaining not just how a recipe works but why it works, so bakers can troubleshoot instead of guess. Every recipe on this site is tested before it's published.

Liz teaches full-length cake tutorials, including sculpted and hyperrealistic cakes, at Sugar Geek University.