M any writers skirt the line between food and sex. But while writing this month's article, on a visit I made with a group of pastry chefs to a cacao plantation and chocolate factory, I clashed with my editors over describing one of the trip's most memorable moments. Although actual immersion in a vat was ruled out, several women working with pails and ladles coated Braker, who stripped to her underwear, with warm liquid milk chocolate. In her brown coating Braker looked like a George Segal sculpture.
Cocoa butter is, after all, the basis of many expensive skin creams.
Two editors whose opinions I value inordinately thought it struck a terribly off-key note. A second editor was offended by the idea of the women workers being hauled out of their job and forced to oblige some visiting poohbah. In fact the workers had something of a holiday painting Braker with chocolate, and we all found her very attractive. Granted, at least in my case I didn't want to have the same thing done to me, or particularly want to lick anyone's chocolate-coated fingers. But I think I'm in the minority.