The future’s sweet

Sweets provide the perfect imaginarium for fun, creative innovation and experimentation, say food futurologist Dr Morgaine Gaye and chocolatier Paul A Young.

Emporious: The Sweet Shop of the Future was an event created by Paul A Young and Dr Morgaine Gaye, which took place over a weekend in March as part of Nesta’s FutureFest at London’s Vinopolis.

Sweets are the perfect imaginarium for fun, colour, innovation and experimentation. From saliva-reacting chocolate centres to 3D printed sugar-craft, the sweetshop of the future explored colour, texture, shape and form. The areas of focus were water, functional food, societal disruption, commodity prices, scarcity and the future of sugar. The aim of the event was to give visitors a glimpse and taste of confectionery created in a world where cacao is the price of gold and sweets double up as art, jewellery and soft furnishings.

The event was intended as a hub for ideation and future interactive sensorial experiences, where the radical and the strange would become the norm and the expected; the aim was to engage people with a fresh awareness of natural functional food, dietary balance, nutritional enrichment and exploration of taste, as well as to promote the best in sustainable ecology and fair trade practice.

Colour, texture, shape and form, have a significant role in this flavoursome world. The future of this creative space has been challenged most recently by cumulative research and public awareness relating to the adverse effects of excess sugar consumption. However, the future of decadence embraces wild new ingredients, textures and flavours, and allows for advances in manufacturing procedures and opportunities for innovation in brand narrative and packaging.
In addition, this environment connects with shifts in contemporary culture and the fast changing nature of the socio-economic landscape. The future of sweets disconnects from a past of sugar dependency, artificial colours and flavours. It also conjures up a world of familiar nostalgia, as most re-inventions tend to be based on sweet varieties we already know
and love.

By design

Young used his experience as a flavour alchemist to create the confectionery items on offer at Emporious. A guided tour of the concepts behind the confectionery enabled the 500 visitors to gain a deep understanding of the products themselves.

Dotted around the room were soft floss lamps, which had been created using a candy floss machine to spin unrefined sugar into thin strands that were then moulded into free-standing light fittings.

Referencing the 18th century love of sugar craft, these suggested a move back towards looking at sugar as a decoration rather than as sustenance, but in the future this could also be due to growing concerns regarding the addictive and unhealthy aspects of the white stuff.

Also, as a nod to nostalgia (just as potent in the future as it is now), candy floss conjures up childhood memories. Pulled sugar and candy floss machines are set to be the counter top fun of yesteryear. The floss lamps were made in layers and coated with natural dehydrated banana and coconut sherbet for added flavour.

Stacked on neon poles were hundreds of ‘Nano Rings’ – machine made dark chocolate lattice rings sprayed metallic red and with a natural rosemary aroma. Symbolising space – the luxury of having space and the ultimate decadence of going into space – the rings used space to create volume and change the mouth feel and perception of a small amount of chocolate with a much larger surface area. Both an edible delight and a piece of display art, 3D printed and fine structures will be commonplace in the sweet shop of the future.

At the centre of the room stood a chandelier, suspended with almost 400 edible chocolate ‘Thirst Globes’, each hand filled with a combination of dehydrated powders. The white chocolate was mixed with sour apple and carrot; the milk chocolate was filled with dandelion and burdock and tomato; and the silver-sprayed dark chocolate encapsulated mandarin and beetroot.

Water supply

The idea that the fragility of our water supply, due to both shortages and contaminants, will affect how we use water in the future was illustrated using liquid free fillings. As visitors ate the Thirst Globes directly from suspended threads, their saliva created a ganache filling as it mixed with the cacao butter and dehydrated powers.

In a world in which cocoa prices will soar and sugar will continue to be the enemy, ‘Micro Disruption Bars’ were created to be sugar free and were sweetened with coconut nectar. They were made to resemble miniature chocolate bars and the surface area of the bar was graffitied with a number of ad hoc colours and designs. These were applied using pigmented cocoa butter. This visual disruption acted as a statement against the current pursuit for perfection and beauty.
Displayed as if in a jeweller’s shop, rows of purple ring boxes showcased the final item – edible diamonds. The ‘diamonds’ referenced how the luxury and kudos of having diamonds might decline with ethical concerns over land and the welfare of workers taking precedence. Fakery will be seen as good, where replicas rule. Re-imagining realness is how the virtual and the 3D world will co-exist. The scent of lavender was sprayed into each box and the one carat edible diamonds gleamed under the lights.

Conclusion

Installations and lighting created an otherworldly ambience as Emporious: The Sweet Shop of the Future introduced visitors to a complete sensorial experience from environment to scent branding and texture to mouth feel and perception. It seems that the future will be delicious!

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