At the annual chocolate show in Paris, it can be challenging to come up with something fresh, but French chocolatier Damien Vidal managed to add the world's hottest chile to his confections for a tongue-tingling twist. Along with classic flavours like raspberry, cassis, and passion fruit, his marble-shaped "Bille en tete" (a play on the French idiom for "headfirst") chocolates also contain Carolina Reaper, which Guinness World Records lists as the spiciest chilli pepper in the entire world. He added just the right amount of chilli to give them flavour without making them unpleasant to eat. The dazzling chocolate-chili balls were sampled by two Japanese tourists as well as other guests at the chocolate expo, and nobody threw them out.
Inviting Vidal as a "young talent" to the Paris Chocolate fair, an award-winning pastry chef who has worked in prestigious Parisian restaurants, said that this delayed effect was exactly what he was looking for: sweet and gentle at first, followed by a taste explosion that subsides after a few minutes. "We've had to go through several recipes, several attempts to find the right balance, one that allows to please most people," he said. French households on average eat 13.2 kilos of chocolate per year, but leave enough for France to export more than 245,000 tonnes of chocolate, worth nearly one billion euros, each year, Paris chocolate industry data show.