by Khadija Malik, December 7, 2021

A Bon Bon (or few) in the making

I am almost at the end of my degree, and this semester was a little relaxing than my previous ones. I have had the chance to work on something I enjoy eating and aspire to understand on a deeper level: bon-bon making. The inspiration struck on a rare weekday after a long day on campus. I went out to Restaurant Depot and purchased a massive block of dark chocolate and chocolate molds. I chopped it all up, had my double boiler set, my granite top sanitized, and my bench-scrapers ready.

Thus began the tedious work of running between the stovetop and the granite top. I wanted to try both the tempering and seeding methods and had both set-ups ready to go, alternating between the two. I prepared a pistachio-rose ganache and chocolate-bitter orange marmalade ganache, ready to pipe. I melted my dark chocolate until it reached a temperature of 128 F and cooled it on the granite to 82 F, I took it back to the double boiler to take the temperature up to 90 F. 

The seeding method required me to melt two-thirds of my chocolate down to liquid consistency and add the rest to cool it down to 90 F.

Once tempered, I poured the chocolate into the molds and turned them over. I popped them in the fridge for 10 minutes until the chocolate was set in the mold. I then piped in my ganache and repeated the same. For the last step, I let poured chocolate over the set ganache and refrigerated it longer. The most challenging part was keeping the chocolate at a temperature to set properly without losing its shine.

I have a newfound respect for chocolatiers: it is no easy job making perfectly uniform bon-bons, let alone decorating, painting, and adding textures to them. I have tried repeatedly to make them, and each time I learn something new, whether it is identifying a mistake or learning a shortcut!