Amy Singh gave a TED Talk on making chocolate—and recapturing the curiosity of youth. Photos by Ondrej Vitousek
Making chocolate is hard. From fermentation to refining the cacao particles, it takes a factory to produce. That’s what the candy companies told Amy Singh (CAS’14) when she decided at nine years old to make a chocolate bar for an independent study project. She ignored the admonition, ground the beans herself, and made the bar anyway.
The chocolate tasted good, so Singh started making more, grinding the beans in a modified pasta maker. It was all just for fun (no profit-spinning chocolate and lemonade stand combo here), but as a young adult, Singh’s passion for all things cocoa expanded: she grew a cacao tree in her New Jersey yard and traveled to Africa with the Global Leadership Adventures program to see how the globalization of chocolate production affects local populations. She also became the youngest presenter at the New York Chocolate Show, speaking and running a demonstration booth to showcase her homespun operation.
Singh’s determination to prove the chocolate execs wrong captured the attention of TEDx organizers, who asked her to tell her story at TEDxPrague 2013. “I thought it was spam,” she says of the invite. “I grew up watching TED Talks. Why would they want to hear from me?”
Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) conferences take place worldwide under the motto “ideas worth spreading.” Singh’s surprise quickly changed to excitement—her hobby had turned her into an expert on chocolate-making. Still, she was nervous as she took the stage at TEDxPrague in the Czech capital, and realized the conference was having information technology problems. “It was really bad,” she says. “They didn’t tell me beforehand because they didn’t want me to worry, so I was clicking things and they wouldn’t work.” Singh says she made it through her talk because people responded to her story—and “well, everybody likes to talk about chocolate.”
Singh’s chocolate-making is on hold for now—it took a backseat in favor of college work (and because dorms aren’t conducive to cottage industries) and remains there as she figures out her post-BU career—but she maintains a website for devotees (www.amyschocolate.com) and receives emails asking for advice on equipment. Singh is happy to help. Small-batch chocolate shops did not exist when she was grinding her own beans as a child, she says. “These days, there are a lot of microbatch chocolate shops popping up,” she says. “It’s been really exciting to see that movement take off.”
Singh still remembers the candy makers who told her she couldn’t make chocolate at home, and she is determined to handle things differently. She is especially encouraging of the children who seek her out and aims to emulate renowned chocolatier Maricel Presilla, who gave Singh her first bag of cocoa beans when she was nine years old—and approved the finished product. “I am incredibly grateful that some adults took me seriously,” she says. “My overall message at TED was very simple: We should all look to our curiosity to see what kind of doors and opportunities it can open. When in doubt, I think that’s something we should all go back to—that idea of what it’s like to be a child and how it feels to look at the world for the first time.”