An aphrodisiac, chocolate can inspire art as much as it enflames our passions. Cosimo Cavallaro’s My Sweet Lord, a contemporary life-size statue of Christ made of milk chocolate, caused such a fervent protest in March that his show was cancelled. (The original sculpture was consumed by mice; its reincarnation will appear at The Proposition Gallery in Manhattan from October 27 to November 24.) Chocolate makes some people quite fanatic, like Damien Hirst, who recently commissioned a chocolate skull.

But if life is like a box of chocolates, it may also constitute one’s livelihood. Vik Muniz, for example, makes a living by creating portraits with Bosco® chocolate syrup (well, actually, chocolate is just one of the many innovative media he uses; other works are made from peanut butter, jelly, junk, clouds, sequins, thread, dust, etc.). In previous works, he has used chocolate to depict Jackson Pollock in action, the Last Supper, and other iconic images. Now, you too can be part of the fun.

You and your loved one can commission one of Muniz’s "His & Hers" chocolate portraits and receive a 60-by-48-inch museum-quality photo of the work, a limited edition of one. Available through Neiman Marcus’s 81st annual "Christmas Book," this seems like a pretty sweet deal. But perhaps $110,000 is a trifle much for an artwork made of truffles. What does $110,000 buy?

Quite a lot, actually. Muniz will donate the proceeds of each painting’s sale to Centro Espacial Rio de Janeiro, a charity he created to bring art projects to life for underprivileged young people in Brazil. “Poor people need money,” Muniz says. “You need to help them directly. I don’t believe in political art. Raising awareness: You have the newspaper for that.”

The Centro Espacial came out of an exchange of ideas that occurred as Muniz collaborated with several young adults in his native Brazil. He believes that an arts organization can teach children valuable trade skills while cultivating the talents they already possess. He intends to create a community of critics, philosophers, and highly trained artists. The money generated from the sale of "His & Hers" will help outfit the school with furniture, space, and technology.

Of course, there are other less noble ways to spend your six-digit chocolate budget. Here’s what else could you buy for $110,000:

1. One and a half golden tickets: $110,000 roughly covers the annual tuition of 1.5 students at the Milton Hershey School, an entirely free residential school. Founded by the great chocolate manufacturer, MHS provides education, career training, housing, clothing, sustenance, health care, and counseling to more than 1,000 children in need.

2. 1,834 cocoa trees. You may take out a year’s lease on an organic Costa Rican cocoa tree for $59.95. Receive at least five pounds of chocolate per tree. And since cocoa trees require a shady canopy for their survival, renting the tree guarantees the survival of part of the rainforest. How could such an investment make anyone even semi-bitter?

3. 55,000 22-ounce bottles (1.21 million ounces) of Bosco® chocolate syrup. Situated in a rather dark tradition, this chocolate played a leading role in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.

4. 295,672 ounces of Cocoa Puffs. You would have to be cuckoo indeed!

5. Excuse me, Mr. Owl. How many Tootsie Roll Pops could I purchase for $110,000? Since you can get 17 of them for only $1.99, Muniz’s portrait is worth approximately 916,666 suckers. How many licks would it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of all of them?

6. A Mayan pot. You could own one of the vessels from which Mayans ate their chocolate. In 2004, Sotheby’s auctioned a 10 and a half-by-14-inch, finely etched vessel for $114,000. Use the pot to prepare a Mayan dish of chocolate, honey, and chili, and follow the Mayan custom of eating chocolate at every meal.

7. Nearly 106 annual salaries for chocolate farmers in Cote d'Ivoire, the Western African nation that produces about 40 percent of the world’s cocoa. The U.S. State Department reports that agricultural workers in the Ivory Coast make an average of about $1,040 a year. Fluctuating cocoa prices mean that the country’s reliance upon the sale of this commodity may really cause the economy to suffer a death by chocolate.