Saying It with Chocolates

Chocolatiers from around the world vie for glory at the annual International Chocolate Awards, which are considered the Oscars of the chocolate world. But Queenie Wu, who submitted her first entries to the ICA in 2019, takes these competitions in her stride. As an independent female business owner, she is more interested in using chocolate to champion the causes of women and artisans whose voices are all too often overlooked in contemporary Taiwan.

The social power of chocolate

“Modern art often incorporates issues related to societal compassion. Chocolate can do the same,” Wu says.

True to artisan chocolatiers’ insistence on fine raw materials, Wu takes particular care to source local ingredients. “Taiwan boasts wonderful fruits—fresh mangos, lychees, and pineapples. The quality of our passion fruit amazes the French. We have mulberries, which Hongkongers are unfamiliar with, and Taiwan is one of the few countries in the world that produce Chinese plums. We also have local crops of all kinds, and flowers, as well as grains and spices used by the Indigenous peoples.”

Wu integrates social issues into her creations. In 2023, for example, she selected white ginger lilies, roses, and jasmines as symbols of femininity. Using her unique technique to extract the scents of these flowers, she won several awards at the ICA, including three Golds. At the awards ceremony in Europe, she drew enthusiastic applause from the audience when sharing the idea of gender equality embodied in her work. In 2024, despite having lost her sense of smell for half a year because of Covid, she again used Taiwanese ingredients to reinterpret Monet’s Impressionist paintings, winning Gold at the ICA with “Monet’s Garden.”

Also in 2024, inspired by her friend Allen Cheng’s creative evocation of the flavor of tonka beans in a cocktail recipe, Wu drew on local spices such as Roxburgh sumac and ailanthus prickly ash to pay tribute to artisans who, like her, were quietly dedicated to their work. Her white-chocolate creation “Exclusive—Tonka x Drizzle Allen” won Silver.

For Wu, chocolate represents a dream, a vocation, a blank canvas for creative endeavors, and a way to express her ideals. Apparently fragile but actually beautifully solid, chocolate has enabled her to fulfil her potential. 

Using a special technique to extract floral scents, Queenie Wu won Gold at the 2023 ICA with her “Exclusive Pâte de Fruits: Ginger Lily.”

In Western countries, chocolatiers usually use oranges to make chocolate-coated dried fruit. Opting instead for Taiwanese green mangoes, Queenie Wu offers an innovative take on this type of chocolate. Her “Comfort Fruit: Green Mango” won Gold at the ICA in 2023.

Describing herself as “a chocoholic since day one,” Queenie Wu has carved out a successful career in the male-dominated world of sweets and desserts.