Are these the best chocolates in the world? Bonbons made in a little grey house in Minnesota, US, compete in the Oscars of craft chocolate
- Hand-roasted and candied nuts. A caramel made with macadamia blossom honey. The thinnest shell of milk chocolate. These might be the best bonbons in the world
- Toasty, nutty, delicate – they are the work of US-based Robyn Dochterman, who has submitted them for the world finals of the International Chocolate Awards
By the time Robyn Dochterman began assembling her award-winning macadamia nut bonbons, she had already been working on them for days.
The chocolatier had roasted and candied the nuts she had crushed by hand. She had cooked up a deep, dark caramel made with macadamia blossom honey she found on holiday in Hawaii, and pulverised more nuts into a paste for the filling. She had painted moulds with splashes of blue cocoa butter and coated their recesses with the thinnest shell of milk chocolate.
And she had already carefully browned the butter for logs of shortbread dough. Between sips of Mountain Dew soda – cans and bottles placed on various kitchen surfaces – she sliced the dough and slid trays into a small convection oven.
The perfume in the air at St Croix Chocolate Company’s production kitchen, in a little grey house in Marine on St Croix, in the US state of Minnesota, could make you swoon.
There was still more to do. Fill the chocolate shells with the caramel, crush the cookies into sand and mix with melted caramelised white chocolate and macadamia nut butter, seal the bottoms with more milk chocolate, chill, remove from the moulds and, hopefully, eat.