I'm not fearful of what's in the basket. I think I'm a little excited, actually. I grew up in Denmark. Where? Denmark. Scandinavia is the home of the Vikings. But I'm super competitive, you know, since I was 14-15 years old. I like my research. Very bold, very straightforward, very white. Sure he was behind to be nice. I'm making goat cheese, big and mild. Lemon, dark chocolate. Mousse. I like my mousse. A robust, big flavor chocolate. Can ask mousse. I'm going to nail round number one. Chef Fritz, what are you making for a whipped element, sir? Moose. It's awesome. It's crowded in here. Can I use this? Yeah. It's somebody they're all different, you know? Chef Fritz looks like he's going to go skiing. He got his goggles on. Yeah, he's dealing with something with liquid nitrogen. I'm still wearing my glasses. We're going to make an ice cream utilizing the bread of the grilled cheese tower and some juice of the myelitans. So I pour my ice cream better into squeeze bottles, and I make little drops into the liquid nitrogen. And I'm very happy. Somebody's shaking my table like crazy. Sorry. Chris is a little nervous, but I think he can take a few deep breaths. It seems like he's got it handled. Sorry. Made a little bit of ganache decoration. It on my plate. Time is ticking. And I'm like, oh, my God.

The challenge is serving up big ol helping a romance. One nervous guy is going to propose marriage right here on the show, and four great chocolate tears are going to help him set the stage. The top showpiece is worth ten grand and hopefully wins. One guy's girl of his dream. From Norwalk, Connecticut. Fritz Nipshill chocolate surprise proposal. Think it's a brilliant idea. It's their future that you're being a part of. So truly, really exciting, and I truly hope people say yes. All right, competitors are going to have five minutes each with well, to ask him as much as you possibly can in those five minutes. Sounds good. Ready? Having a guy who's going to propose to his girlfriend, that's huge. If I were to propose on the show hi. Friday. Nice to meet you. I would really, really want the competitors to listen to. But what is important to me when did you meet? If you want to know, our first date was at some dive bar in Seattle playing pool there. Any pets? Novice. She loves pugs. Hobbies. What do you like to do? We like weird kind of foreign board games. The favorite colors I should know about? She's crazy about green. Crazy colors that burn your eyeballs out. Flowers. She like flowers? Yeah. Gerber daisy. I thought it'd be cool if you could make a flower that maybe I could pick off the showpiece and give to her. Thank you. Damn, that's a cool girl. Where do you find girls like that? Okay, so here are the rules. Each of these show pieces needs to be at least 4ft tall or 4ft wide. And besides a few structural supports, it's got to be all chocolate show pieces themselves. Got to be romantic and personal because Will is the one that's going to choose the winner. And I bet this is going to be close. I was on fire. I think it's huge to be a part of somebody's proposal. We got to make giant hearts and really embrace the story. We're going to be applying mosaic on every single half of the chocolate hearts. Guess you could call it the four corners of love. On the romantic corner, we're going to be writing love. Then on the other one, we will write the initials of gum and bride to be. We will then try to capture where they met. So it's got to be really personalized, and that is the strength that I'm bringing to this challenge, is to make everything really personalized. You know what I would like us to do? I would like us to move it to that board. I make a decision to move the piece to the base board. Will be easier that we move it now without all the plank. Then we have fixed all the small pieces while it's standing there so we don't have to move with the small pieces on it. Don't lift it. Oh, my God. We're not going to let wheel down. That was really what a lot of this was for me. He would be so disappointed if one sculpture didn't make it. Yeah. I'm very relieved that it's now up. There still a lot to do, though. Competitors, this is your 1 hour warning. Use these last 60 minutes wisely. Where did the time go? It would be amazing if you pop the question in front of our sculpture. Really came back strong. I'm very happy with the way we came back. 30 seconds. Maybe you could get one round, one down. 54321. Competitors, stop your work. Very good job today, ma'am. Okay, Britz, you're up next. It's born a ball. Keep it level. Who knows if somebody's going to tilt it one inch to the left, is going to break on the right. Slide it slowly. Thank you. Great job. Thank you, guys. Thank you. That felt great.

Master chocolate maker Fritz Kinipchel has been turning out his fine, eclectic truffles for the past seven years, from bonbons with a spicy heat of tangerine and red chili to liquid caramels encased in dark chocolate and topped with sea salt and many more. If you go to chocoplogie His Chocolate Lounge and Cafe in South Norwalk, Connecticut, you can see how Fritz and his team produced these chocolates for gourmet stores across the country. this is the fill up on the dark chocolate. Fritz explains that raw chocolate must be tempered first in a Tempering machine, which melts chocolate at the proper temperature, maintains it, and allows the cocoa butter to crystallize. When it cools, you get shiny, crisp chocolate. Here, Andrew Dixon fills a mold with dark chocolate before setting it on a machine to shake out the air bubbles and drain away excess chocolate. So this is how your depth of chocolate is inside. When it cools, it forms a chocolate shell that then can be filled. This one has a strawberry lemon thyme ganache. Inside, another features a dark chocolate filling. When the inside is set, it's back to the Tempering machine for another dose of chocolate. Spreading it out forms the bottom of the truffle. Designs can be painted into the molds with contrasting chocolate. Here, Sonia Martinez applies a swirl before adding a white chocolate shell and mint ganache filling. At another station, truffles get a dusting of edible coppers before getting packed into colorful boxes. It's a lot of work, but now you know why. Fritz's chocolates sell for $60 a pound, and in the shop, they go for a dollar 50 a piece. But if you're the owner, you get to sample whatever you like. I'm Paul Lin for Dow Jones Online.

Can you believe it? We have one of the best chocolateiers right here in Norwalk, Connecticut. His name is Fritz Knipschildt. Am I saying it right? Good. And he makes delicious candies and he's developed something specially for our catalog. It is a bush de Noelle, but not a Boost Noel cake. But this is instead had a Bush Noel made out of marzip, chocolate and various and sundry other delicious things, right? That's correct. And they're beautiful frits. You really are. And he's kind enough to come and visit with us today so that he can show us how to make a bush noelle, which is a yule log out of candy. This is so delicious, this chocolate. It looks like milk chocolate, but it has something else in it. What? This is chandua. It is milk chocolate processed with roasted hazelnuts. Chanduja is also available in specialty food stores like any other dark chocolate. So you're going to make what out of it? We're going to make a ganache. Have chopped up the chocolate a little bit. We have to bring the cream to a boil. Okay. So a ganache is really like a very thick melted chocolate. Correct. I pour this in, please. So how much chocolate is there here's? 400 grams of chocolate, which is 13 and a quarter ounces. And then how much heavy cream? Then we have 320 grams of heavy cream and that translates to ten and two thirds ounces that is boiled up with 60 grams of sugar. So that's 2oz of sugar. Okay. Well, we can manage that. And then the butter is 80 grams of butter, which is two and two thirds ounces. So GIANDUJA is spelled G-I-A-N-D-U-J-A. Okay. When it's done, nice and smooth. Looks beautiful. We set it aside hopefully overnight or around 8 hours. Oh, why? It's better to rest. Yeah. Okay. Then over here we have the finished. So this is the same thing. It's been sitting for 8 hours. A little darker. Does it get darker? It gets a little darker. Oh, good. Okay. What we're going to do is we got to roll the marzipan out and we're going to use did you make your own marzipan? No, from Oden's. Marzipan. That's from my hometown, actually. Oden. Where are you from? Denmark. So what we do is we're going to sprink a little confection sugar on the table marks the pan is really ground almonds and sugar. That's great. So you just use that powdered sugar as flour, really, to keeps it from sticking. Yeah. So how many ounces of we have one pound of Mars. one pound Okay. So that's 16oz. And we're going to cut these into rectangles and you can of course, reuse this. Yeah. We're going to make some small holly berries and other beats with a marzipan. You shouldn't have any trouble finding marzipan because it is available in most supermarkets, this wonderful brand, or in gourmet stores, right? That's correct. So you need three rectangles. So each one of these makes one candy cake? That's correct. You got to dust off a little bit of the conflicts. You go. Then we're going to spread out the shanduya ganache. How much? Like three spoons? A little bit more. And then we just spread it out even over the entire thing? Yeah. And then we're going to sprinkle them with pistachios, pretty much a little bit like Oliver just so when we cut it, we have the beautiful colors of the queen pistachios and also the wonderful taste of them, of course. I love that. Now, are these salty pistachios or unsalted? Unsalted. Then we're just going to roll it like this. And if we can, then we're going to set them aside for an hour in the freezer so they're nice and easy to work with. And we should have two ones in there. Yes, you do. So we put the ganas bag on the stove, so it's going to be a little softer. And the scrapes we have left over we can use for holly berries, holly trees, and leaves. Sorry. So you colored this with a paste color, with a nice color red and a nice color green. How big should the berries be? Going to make some leaves. Yeah. How did you make these cute little things? These are actually the trees that we are using in the catalog. So I see this is white chocolate. Oh, so it's a candy with a transfer of vegetable diet. Yeah. And for the leaves, we can just leave it like this. Make a little cut here and a cobble that way. So with the ganache, we have to be careful when we reheat it. We don't want it to break. I see. This is perfect. These look like giant egg rolls. Just going to put a little bit of the ganache on, and then we're going to smoothen it out just like this. Then we're going to use the fog one. Oh, yeah. I love doing fogwise. Yeah, please do. Yeah, we want to cut off the ends. Oh, to make it more even? Yeah. Okay. Well, one off the ends. We got a key, actually, to put on top of the piece. So one piece we can put bag on. Oh, yes, it looks like yeah, I'll do that one. Thank you. You have to practice. This is very much like making the cake. It is. I do the cake like this and make the mushrooms. Oh, it looks beautiful. The other piece is just a snack. That's correct. And then we can see the pistachios coming out. So pretty. And then we just have to take a rate at the way we like it done. So how do you do that? Make a couple I'll put a mushroom that was in your catalog, maybe do one with a little tree, and then you do the one with it. So you just transfer that to a beautiful serving platter and add a tiny bit of snow and these little mushrooms made out of baked meringue. They're so beautiful. I want two on there. Very cute. And then you can use more than one on a platter like this, decorated with beautiful white spruce. All of a sudden, you've created a boost to Noel made out of marzipan and chocolate and almonds and meringues. And they're gorgeous. Really great. You're a true artist with chocolate. Thank you.

On this episode of throwdout, they might start calling me Bobby the truffle maker. It's a battle of the bond bonds with master chocolates here at Fritz canipchel. I've been exposed to chocolate my whole life. Fritz thinks his award winning chocolates have earned him a spot on a food network special and a chance to teach a group of culinary students the fine art of chocolate making. What he doesn't know is that I'll be showing up with a lesson plan of my own. It's sculpture versus sculpture. Don't back up. Shuffle versus truffle. This is good. Hi. My name is Fritz Kripchild. Fritz snipchild master chocolate tear from Norwalk, Connecticut. Well, I couldn't imagine a life without chocolate. Fritz is a master chocolate. Here a chocolate sculptor. This is perfect chocolate making. And the proud owner of Nipshilk chocolate tear and cafe chocopologie It's so difficult for me to say which chocolate is my favorite, because they are all like childs. Fritz has received critical acclaim from dozens of magazines and TV shows. In 2004, Fritz was a fancy food finalist for both outstanding confection and outstanding new products. Fritz earned his culinary chops in his homeland of Denmark and moved to the US. In 1996. When I started out, people thought I was nuts. How are you going to create a chocolate company based on flavors like apple, rosemary, and chattering red chili? And now, ten years later, people love it. Well, and we'll certainly consider our chocolates to be some of the finest chocolates made in America. Annie's hard at work preparing to teach a group of culinary students a class on truffle making and chocolate sculpture. I'm here to visit long island city high school, but I'm also here to challenge my friend Fritz here to a chocolate throwdown for the challenge? Absolutely. All right, let's do it. I'm a bad loser. Let's put it that way. Going up against Fritz's rich chocolate truffles emotion your mouth is very smooth, and they're already scoring high marks. But at the last minute, fritz decides to trump my truffle. I got to work on a special chocolate. The vanilla dumped. He's making new truffles. Is that even legal? Oh, no. Instead, Fritz has decided to make a molded chocolate. He's taken caramel cream and placed it in the center of a dark chocolate flower mold. It's tinted with red and dusted with gold luster and finally topped with sea salt. It's interesting. It's very good. But I like Chef Bobby better. I can only hope that Fritz's last minute chocolate will work against him. We both make the final tweaks to our sculptures. Fritz caps off his with a large chocolate egg. And now we leave it in the hands of our secret judges. I'm Tish Boyle, editor in chief of chocolate tear magazine. I'm John Holland, culinary arts teacher, Long Island City High School. We've put up chocolate against chocolate, sculpture against sculpture, and now it's up to judges Tish Boyle and John Holland to choose the winner. My rich and spicy Mexican truffles with white chocolate drizzle and my history of chocolate sculpture are letter B Fretz's last minute switch from a dark chocolate truffle to a brand new caramel and sea salt molded chocolate and his Hans Christian Anderson inspired sculpture are letter A. The chocolates will be judged on look, flavor, and texture. The sculptures will be judged on originality of design and overall execution. But I don't think that should take away from the design. I think it's well crafted. The chocolate is shiny. There's a good use of color in here, mathematically. Look at this. How to hold everything up like that. It's very interesting. Design is interesting. There's been some craft work done here. That's not an easy thing to do. Presentation could have been a little higher, I think, but I think it's nice. And now it's time for our final marks. Have we agreed? I think so, John. I think the winner of this throwdown is I was afraid that probably would be in a Chuckling competition. I mean, I'll be scared to face him in the Iron Chef. So did a nice job. Absolutely.

This is Food Network challenge. Chocolate landmarks. Today, for the country's top chocolate tears, we'll be recreating some of the world's most notable landmarks, from the Taj Mahal and the Eiffel Tower to the Statue of Liberty and St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. Some of the world's most beautiful buildings come to a line using only chocolate. That has to be completely architecturally accurate to get any respect from the judges, and you've got to make this happen in only 8 hours. My name is Switz Knipschills. I'm the owner of Knipschild Chocolate Cheer in South SnowWalk, Connecticut. I'm a very creative person. I like to infuse different things and like everything to have this modern twist, even though I'm classically trained. The thing is the strength to this competition because I've chose a landmark that is a beautiful cathedral. Well, we chose the song Basil because it is just spectacular with all the different domes and different colors. It's not your classical cathedral that has a gold dome, and that's it. It has yellow, blue, green. Of course, later on, I learned that it was actually built so that nobody could could actually go and build a cathedral like this again, ever, anywhere, because it is so special. Let's get started. With a couple of hours left of the competition, I went on to decorate the domes. It's extremely frustrating to sit on the competition, and you're sitting with a little frost, painting a color on one stripe, moving on to the next drive, and looking at the clock and just seeing it going down and down and down. We're pretty far into the competition now, and I'm wondering sort of where is Fritz's piece? Because I've seen a lot of parts come together. He's got many building blocks for his building, but I don't see a building yet. How are you over there? Good. We finally start to assemble the towers everywhere. Eager to get the towers up now, because time was going really fast. It's crucial that it's leveled. Otherwise, the whole tower will lean, and all the weight will go to one side, and it will probably fall. I'm good to hear. Good to him. Ladies and gentlemen, competitors, we are coming to the end of chocolate landmark challenge. I'm not going to make it. Brandon, go straight. Audience, please help me count it down. From 54321. Stop your word. Time ran out, and I'm looking at her going, I can't believe I'm at the finish line, and she's not done. She was missing her tablet, and her arm was a little crooked. We did everything we wanted except those little molding pieces that we did that obviously we couldn't and we may. Swamp panel overall look with exactly how I want it. There's one more critical step in this challenge. These chocolate landmarks have got to get to the judging table. Chef Chris, please move your showpiece to the judging table. Lift up a little bit. Don't go down. Good. Okay, confeders. The landmarks are on the judging table. Before anybody walks away with a metal or money, they have to face the judge. It hi. Hey, Fritz. How are you? Fritz, your piece is really nicely solidly built. That's why I really like that about your piece. I would have liked to have seen a little more architecturally challenging piece from you, though. For me, I just felt like you were making hexagon after hexagon, and you just stacked them up at the end. The thing I wasn't quite sure about is the towers themselves are very graphic, kind of flat and high contrast. Looks more like a gingerbread house than perhaps St. Basil in Moscow. It's an interpretation, obviously, for you, so I'm still kind of undecided. I think I was surprised that she found it to be a negative. I think it had this cute fairytale gingerbread feel to it. I just felt that it was a great piece and a perfect piece for the challenge.

It's challenge time once again, so the showpieces have to move. Hear what I just said? Moving chocolate from Norwalk, Connecticut. Fritz Nip. Chills. This is certainly revenge. This is my third challenge. The first challenge, you are going to get me. And the second one, I was up against Chris. Chris won that one. I think this is the time to show them my best work. So, Casper, how are you doing? You're melding? You're tempering the chocolate, right? Yes, I'm doing good right now. My sister is Casper Peterson. He's very focused, and he knows chocolate in and out. The name of his chopper is arctic Triumph Ulof balloon. So it's going to be an air balloon, and the basket will be a boat, which is Noah's ark. I want it to look like an arc because it is an arc. So that's why I'm doing it. This really rustic style. My moving elements will be two propillars moving as well as the showpiece moving. The propillars are going to move by a small little engine. You better make sure that gets no chocolate into the engines or they won't move at all. One wonderful thing about Fritz's piece is it has just an odd sort of childlike sense of wonder about it. The balloons have been causing these fellas some real problems, and he's had some breakage. Honestly, these fellows have had trouble since the get go. The arc is a really heavy piece. It's probably around thirty pounds, and it will be sitting on this pole. This pole needs to be able to set and get hard because we need to peel off the PVC pipe. If that pole is not perfect, the whole showpiece will come down. You have a good grip? I believe so. Lift it. We carefully move our showpiece onto the turntable. Let's go. And now they're going to actually just have to, like, wedge PVC apart. It touches the base and it touches the arc, which is what I'm nervous about because it could break either part of it. Yeah, look at it. And I'm happy. Perfect. That's it. Competition is running out of time, and Fritz still got to get his balloons up. Detail work galore. I mean, I don't even know if he's going to finish at this point. If anything goes wrong, he is done. No worries. Don't worry. We unmoled the two last molds, and they're both perfect. These balloons should have been done 4 hours ago. We're really racing against the clock to pull this forward. I'm going to do this one. From the engineering perspective, it is going to be impressive if Fritz pulls off. Putting those balloons up on top of those little spindly poles very tricky. The last balloon is not coming on easily. We need them to be sitting so close to each other, but if they sit too close, there's also a risk that they can crack. Did it feel like it cracked inside? No, it didn't. Sure, if I didn't feel it in. Fred, let's do it. How do you feel? You feel comfortable? Okay, let's lift it. Get it off the table. Nice and easy. It's heavy. Casper is going to put the electronics together inside the boat to get the propellers to turn. Wow. That's it. Nice. Good job. And I'm just super happy. Ritz, welcome. You are a tremendously talented chocolate here. Thank you. The movement was actually excellent. It had an odd sort of art about it that really made it seem like it was being propelled by propellers or something. All the engineering feats that you did, including the strobe lights inside the balloons, are really the best part to me. The balloons did have really some quite large seams on joins of the two parts of the eggs when you put them together. But it was colorful and pretty and definitely had a whimsy about it. It grew on me over the course of the day. You do have the motion, you get the lights. Those are fantastic. They catch your attention and I don't know what that thing is, but it's fun. I feel good. They knew I wanted to do a playful piece. They all complimented me on doing a fun, happy peace. And I think that really speaks to who I am.