What is the most expensive sweet?

There is no official list of the world's most expensive sweets. Guinness World Records does keep records for chocolate, though, and a handful of chocolates and desserts have made headlines for their prices. Here are the best documented examples.

The most expensive chocolate, by weight

Guinness World Records lists La Chuorsa, an 80 g bar made by Attimo Chocolate in Zurich, Switzerland, as the most expensive chocolate. On 31 October 2019 it cost CHF 640, about £501.75, which works out at £6,268.50 a kilogram.

The bar is made with saffron grown in the Swiss village of Mund, crystallised orange crisps and 68 per cent Chuao chocolate from Venezuela. Saffron is costly because it is harvested by hand: a kilogram needs some 440,000 hand picked stigmas, from about 150,000 crocus flowers, and premium saffron regularly sells for more than US$5,000 a kilogram.

The $250 truffle

The Danish chocolatier Fritz Knipschildt, who works in Connecticut in the United States, makes a chocolate called La Madeline au Truffe, which retails at $250 each, about $2,600 a pound. Guinness World Records featured it in 2017.

At its heart is a real truffle: a rare French Périgord truffle, the prized fungus, surrounded by a ganache of cream, sugar, truffle oil and vanilla. It is coated in 70 per cent dark chocolate, rolled in fine cocoa powder and presented in a silver box on a bed of faux pearls.

The record bar sold at auction was British

The record for the most expensive chocolate bar sold at auction belongs to a Cadbury's bar. It went to the Antarctic on Captain Robert Scott's first expedition, the Discovery expedition of 1901 to 1904, which carried 1,587 kg of cocoa and chocolate.

The bar was made at Cadbury's Bournville factory in Birmingham. It is 10 cm long and survived wrapped and uneaten in a cigarette tin, and on 25 September 2001 an anonymous buyer paid £470 for it at Christie's in London. For another bar that has lasted more than a century, see what is the oldest chocolate bar in the UK?

Headline prices

• Amedei Porcelana, a dark chocolate bar from Tuscany in Italy, has often been described as the world's most expensive chocolate. It is made from Porcelana cocoa beans, a highly prized variety grown on small plantations in Venezuela, and Amedei makes about 20,000 bars a year. Its often quoted price is $90 a pound.
• The Golden Opulence Sundae, served to order at the Serendipity 3 restaurant in New York, was listed by Guinness World Records in 2007 as the most expensive sundae in the world, at US$1,000. It is covered in 23 carat edible gold leaf.

What makes a sweet expensive?

The record holders have a few things in common:

• Costly ingredients, such as saffron, truffles and prized cocoa beans.
• Small batches and hand work, as with Amedei's 20,000 bars a year and hand picked saffron.
• Luxury extras, such as edible gold leaf and presentation boxes.
• History. The record auction bar was an ordinary Cadbury's bar that had been to the Antarctic with Scott.

Pick and mix sits at the other end of the scale. It is priced by weight, so you pay only for what you choose: see why is pick and mix sold by weight?

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