Firstly a Happy New Year to you all, we’re back and ready to start 2011 with a bang! We hope your holiday season was everything you wanted it to be.

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As we have done the past couple of years we decided to treat our guinea pigs… er.. um.. I mean friends, with a selection of goodies for Christmas. It gives us a chance to try out some new techniques and recipes without the stress of them being for a customer. And we can get reviews on the items from a mix of tastes and preferences, a nice way to see what’s popular.

We started off with two chocolates. First up, a sesame square. Sesame brittle crunched up into chocolate for the base and a chocolate-tahini ganache on top, sprinkled with some toasted sesame seeds. The mix of chocolate and sesame caused some people to stop and think but overall it went down well.

The walnut bonbons were a definite success. A dark chocolate shell, nice and thin and consistent all the way around. The filling was almond, caramel and toasted walnuts, a wonderful mix. These really were the winners this year.

We made two different pate de fruit.. fruit jellies that is. We did a layered one, raspberry, basil and peach. I knew raspberry and basil worked together well although it’s a combination that some people don’t want to even try. I knew raspberry and peach worked so the only gamble here was peach and basil though we were fairly confident. The raspberry layer was thinner than I had wanted but the combination worked really well, nice and refreshing.

Then we tried our hands at some lime slices. These took a bit more effort and still came out a little soft and hard to cut accurately. They had a wonderful tangy flavour that was aided by adding some citric acid to the sugar that they’re coated in. Another winner!

Marshmallows are always a firm favourite so we decided to jazz them up this year with the addition of passionfruit.. It almost worked. They ended up with a hint of flavour, just not as strong as we would have liked. We’ll need to work on them some more.

Finally we ended the goodie box with honeycomb, also known as sponge toffee. Caramel with a hint of honey though the name comes from the honeycomb like structure.

And of course, the furry friends got some of our brew bones. Can’t go leaving them out now can we!

This includes traditional items such as divinity and pralines, along with candied zests, marzipan squares and many other delicious items. Visit the gallery for more items. Hopefully in time many more confections will be joining them.

Since I’ve been following her she graduated from class and has been opening her own business making chocolates and candy bars. She moved back to LA and making a policy of using local ingredients (organic where possible) and nothing artificial, her business has been steadily growing.

BonBonBar started off at farmers markets, she then progressed to offering a mail service and now her chocolates are available in a wide number of stores in LA.

Just before Christmas I finally ordered some of her products. I had wanted to since I arrived here (she doesn’t ship overseas), however she is very proud of her products and doesn’t want anything to damage their quality and so until the cooler weather hit it was overnight shipping or nothing.

As soon as the cool weather arrived I ordered some. A small selection containing some of the Single Malt Scotch Ganache Bars, Caramel Nut Bars and the Malt Bar, along with the Pumpkin Pie Bar, available for the holidays only. The only bar I didn’t try was the Orange Bar.

I also had some of the Caramels (I had the original and the salted nut.. She also has wildflower honey, cinnamon almond and single malt scotch), but not the marshmallows (available in vanilla or passionfruit). They arrived in the cutest little box and I couldn’t wait to try them out.

I have to say, these were some of the best chocolates I have ever had. The flavours were well balanced, a fantastic use of salt made the flavours pop and also helps cut through the sweetness of the chocolate. I will not hesitate to buy more of her products next time I want to treat myself. The caramels were a little soft, but full of flavour.

They have a short shelf life, due to no artificial ingredients. It’s hard to imagine a ‘fresh’ chocolate rather than a bar that’s been sat on a shelf for no one knows how long, but you can taste it, you can tell from the first bite that these are something special!

I’m trying to encourage people to support her not only because they are amazing chocolates but because I admire what she’s done.

She finished culinary school and immediately set to working on what she wanted to achieve, and she is doing well at it, she’s having to hire staff now to keep up with demand.

Please do support BonBonBar, you won’t regret it!