Twenty-year-old Alex Yeatts and 22-year-old Abby Wilcox were in a chocolate making class as pastry students at the Culinary Institute of America. They were inspired by chocolate geodes that their professor Peter Greweling had made and wanted to go about creating their own.

Chef Greweling challenged them to figure out the process on their own using their knowledge of chocolate and sugar chemistry. With the guidance of their chef, they made GIANT sparkling chocolate geodes.

They tempered massive amounts of molten chocolate — the largest of the geodes was over 50 pounds — and poured it into egg-shaped molds.

The crystals are actually similar to rock candy that you’d make at home. They used concentrated sugar syrup in beautiful purple and orange hues.

Six months later, in February 2017, they cracked open their collection of 12 geodes of varying sizes — with spectacular results.