Sweet Serendipity: Chocolatier Daniel Corpuz on Seizing Opportunities and Landing on Netflix's School of Chocolate

(SPOT.ph) “[Chocolate] is much more complex than you might think it is,” says Daniel Corpuz, Filipino-American chocolatier and contestant of Netflix show School of Chocolate. The pastry chef was visiting Manila and had just wrapped up a long demo with Filipino brand Auro Chocolate, of his famous School of Chocolate Philippine coffee bag at Taguig’s Enderun Colleges. Brimming with energy, the chef explained the step-by-step of tempering chocolate and making the coffee mousse, chocolate cake, and mango compote that would form the layers of his signature confection (an adapted version of it, anyway). After assembling the coffee bag, he goes on to sign recipe sheets and answer questions from the institution’s many curious students.

Not only has Corpuz skyrocketed to fame from his time on the Netflix show; he now also owns Canal Street, New York-based Daniel Corpuz Chocolatier, where he peddles sumptuous bonbons and other chocolate confections with Asian and Filipino flavors. His breathtaking chocolate sculptures and showpieces have also helped garner the chef a following social media. Amazingly, it was an unplanned yet ultimately fortuitous route that led to these successes—a point we learn as Corpuz shares to us his story.

Also read: Here's Why Café Aurora's Chef Quenee Vilar Is Culinary Royalty

Filipino-American chocolatier Daniel Corpuz talks about Filipino flavors, serendipity, and how he fell in love with chocolate:

Corpuz' All-Rice Days and How He Expanded His Horizons

It’s hard to believe the 24-year old, Staten Island-born pastry chef didn’t always hold the same revere for chocolate—or other foods for that matter. He did grow up in a Filipino household (his parents immigrated to the U.S. in the ‘90s) and was exposed to Filipino dishes and ingredients like turon and sinigang—but was “the pickiest eater” who only ever ate, drumroll please, white rice. “Yeah, like just white rice,” he laughs. That was the crux of my diet.”

It was baking, however—which Corpuz got into as turned 12—that proved to be the catalyst of sorts to him widening his palate (and diet). “Even I started baking, I was like, ‘Okay, let me try this ingredient. Let me try this food. Let me try this,’” he says. “And it just built built, and built that it became the career.”

Corpuz developed a bit of a fascination for making chocolate sculptures following a free demo at an unrelated event he was at, by established chocolatier Susan Notter. This planted a seed in his mind that he was able to cultivate as he soon entered the Culinary Institute of America. Corpuz became especially drawn to the world of pastry, and had the opportunity to take a three-week chocolate class under Pastry Instructor Stephen Durfee. “It was more an introductory [class to making] very classic French-style chocolates—fondant [and] truffles [and the like],” he relays.

As the pandemic set in, he got to hone his chocolate-making prowess by immersing himself in books (including relatively obscure reads from the likes of Stéphane Leroux and other renowned, “highly knowledgeable” chefs, Corpuz shares) and Youtube videos on the subject. “It was a lot of fine-tuning the skills or relearning it—it was a lot of like, ‘self-taughtness’,” he chuckles.

Landing on Netflix School of Chocolate + Making the Famous Coffee Bag

You could well consider it a classic case of serendipity working its magic. Corpuz, who was then working at New York’s Manhatta restaurant, lost his job in light of COVID-19—leaving him “stuck at home” for the most part. But with about 25 (!) pounds of chocolate from the Culinary Institute of America (where he had graduated from just shortly prior) keeping him company at home, he started playing around with making all kinds of chocolatey treats with intricate and fancy designs, “just for fun.”

He would post his work on Instagram, capturing the attention (and cravings) of many—so much so that it caught wind of a casting company working with Netflix. “And they reached out directly, being like, ‘Hey, [we’re doing] a show all about chocolate, would you be interested in applying or at least chatting with us?’” It was a whirlwind from there, and Corpuz eventually found himself appearing on the show.

Quick throwback to the show’s first episode: Participants were challenged to create a chocolate pastry sans a pre-made mold, and “turn it into an illusion”—leading to some unusual yet clever ideas. Corpuz, for one, flexed his creativity given the said limitations with his dessert-ified Pinoy coffee bag.

“I didn’t necessarily envision it to represent the Philippines,” he admits. “It just so happened that when I was thinking about what I wanted to do, naging gano’n ‘yung concept. I was like, ‘Okay, let's just put the Philippine map on there.’” He explains how he googled Filipino coffee bags for design inspiration, and saw a company whose packaging had a “similar vibe, similar look.” “And then from there, I made it.”

Corpuz—who is also the youngest contestant of their batch (at 21!), as well as the sole Filipino—created a makeshift mold by heating acetate to get it slightly crumpled—allowing him to capture real coffee bags’ slouchy, slightly wrinkled character. With layers of coffee mousse, chocolate chigon sponge, blood orange jam, and a feuilletine crispy base on the inside, the dessert happily managed to impress host Amaury Guichon, who praised his creativity and “out-of-the-box” thinking.

Other Hallmarks of the Young Chef's Career + The Magic of Chocolate

Since graduating from the CIA, Corpuz has worked the kitchens of New York establishments including One White Street, The Modern at MOMA, The Clocktower, and the aforementioned Manhatta. He’s likewise held events and pop-ups over in the Big Apple—some with Filipino brands Kasama rum and of course, Auro Chocolate.

Filipino cacao and chocolate, he shares, ought to be on more people’s radars. “As chefs in the industry, we’re always quick to think about cacao being from South America or Africa,” he admits. “And until we break that cycle, and introduce individuals to more than just what we know, we'll never actually be able to showcase… what the Philippines [or] what Asia has to offer.”

On a grander scale, Corpuz looks at chocolate with deep admiration, acknowledging its complexity and how it ought to be viewed as being at par with, say, coffee or wine. Granted, chocolate is a a confection we’re often introduced to early, as opposed to coffee and wine that we tend to encounter more as adults. “So we will always think of it as candy.” But, as he’s come to learn, far from being all there is to it—not with diversity present in the world of chocolate, as well as its versatility. Chocolates with cacao from different farms or parts of the world, for example, could taste vastly different from one another—and this understanding, he explains, gives you a “better appreciation” of the confection.

“As somebody who transforms it as a chef, I think the fact that chocolate can be created into such a beautiful product—whether it be chocolate bonbons, a showpiece or whatever—it's unexpected. And you don't think that chocolate can be like that.”

Sweet Serendipity at Play

Corpuz admits how he didn’t quite plan to get where he is now. “A lot of this is very by chance, which is funny,” he says. “When I'm talking to students right now, I've asked them the question of like, ‘What's the dream?’, and they tell me what their answer is whatever. And then I tell them, ‘Okay, cool. That might be the dream right now. But just so you know, your dream might change, five to 10 years from now.’”

“If you had asked me… three years ago, ‘Are you going to open a truffle shop? Are you going to solely work in chocolate? Are you going to make more showpieces?,’ I would have absolutely say no… or like, ‘Oh, maybe one day that [could happen, but] right now I just want to work in the restaurant that climb my ladder,” he continues. “So if the opportunity hits, it does and you just go with it. Go for it.”

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