Breaking off a piece of that Kit Kat bar gets a lot more difficult when the whole thing weighs 13 pounds.
Ann Reardon, a food scientist and dietitian with an ironic obsession for unhealthy desserts, started the very successful blog How To Cook That back in 2011 to showcase her homemade cakes, cookies, and chocolate creations. Since then, her audience has grown exponentially with almost 3 million subscribers on YouTube.
While she does share some basic dessert recipes, it's her beautiful, intricate masterpieces that suck people in. Chocolate camera, anyone? How about a cake that looks like an iPad, or one of an entire Minecraft village?! She captures the process on video for all to see and recreate at home (if they're daring enough).
While the outcome of these confections is extremely impressive, it was not the highly detailed chocolate work or cake-building skills that caught my attention.
What really got me was a video of her making this 13.23-pound Kit Kat bar, which is equivalent to about 141 regular Kit Kat bars:
Okay, okay... it's not like there hasn't been any huge Kit Kat bars before. We've even shown of a few gigantic ones in the past, but this one looks exactly like a full Kit Kat candy bar—not just a single finger, i.e., a piece.
Reardon replicated the iconic treat by using industrial-size wafers, chocolate, and a homemade mold made out of cardboard, acetate, glue, and packing tape (here's her template). Overall, this was a labor-intensive process, but oh so worth it.
She first stacked the wafers with a thin layer of chocolate spread evenly between each, then cut the large stack into fingers with a serrated knife.
Once the fingers were cut, she placed one finger into her mold that had been filled with tempered chocolate. She even made sure to use plastic cut-out letters at the bottom of the mold to add the "Kit Kat" logo on top of the individual fingers. Her attention to detail is incredible.
I'm not totally sure what it was, but something about watching the smooth chocolate get ladled into the mold was deeply satisfying to me. All of Reardon's videos have a serious ASMR vibe–especially if you watch them all in a row, as I've done multiple times. The soothing Australian accent doesn't help much.
So satisfying, right?!
She then poured more tempered chocolate on top to cover the whole wafer finger, then let it harden so she could extract it easily. This was done for all four fingers. Afterward, she threw the finished pieces into a different, less crazy mold with melted chocolate already layered in it, then attached the fingers together by piping in the gaps.
When it was completely solid, she then wrapped it in foil, followed by red wrapping paper, and attached a print-out of the large Kit Kat logo on it to make it look like a legit Nestlé bar (or, Hershey's, in the US). Looks pretty damn good, right?
If you don't want to go all out on your own making (and paying) for this humungous Kit Kat bar, you can still make your own Kit Kats at home using our guide below.
And if making colossal candies from scratch wasn't mind-blowing enough for you, Ann then gifts them to people who are making a difference in the lives of others. We reached out to Reardon for a comment and this is what she had to say:
My YouTube channel has 3 million subscribers and up to 18 million viewers each month, so it's a vast audience and I really wanted to leverage that influence by highlighting unsung heroes who were doing GIANT things with their lives.
I've always been involved in community work, helping teenagers and working with the underprivileged, so it was quite natural to bring that part of my life into my YouTube channel... I guess that is one of the most encouraging things for me about the "GIANT THINGS" series… it's more than just entertainment, it's a small voice of hope and encouragement to people who are going through tough times.
Reardon chose to gift this giant Kit Kat to a man named Jackson who runs a local Australian youth group, Shirelive Youth. This organization creates a place where kids in the community can have fun and express themselves through creative programming outside of their home or school.
Look how happy he is! See, this is what happens when you pay it forward. Clearly, the moral of this story is do nice things for others and you might end up with a giant candy bar.
Make sure to check out and subscribe to all of Ann's other culinary undertakings on her blog, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. And, as always, make sure to share using the links below. Feel free to drop us a comment letting us know what substantial sweet you'd be interested in seeing Ann make next!
Just updated your iPhone to iOS 18? You'll find a ton of hot new features for some of your most-used Apple apps. Dive in and see for yourself:
Be the First to Comment
Share Your Thoughts