What is a chocolate bonbon?
A bonbon with a speckled green, black, and white coloration on the outside. This one was filled with a sesame matcha filling.
A bonbon is a type of chocolate confection that normally is filled with a soft center ganache, caramel, or other soft or liquid center. What determines a bonbon is how it is made, not what is included inside.
How a bonbon is made:
A mold is usually “painted” with cocoa butter colours (like food colouring, but for chocolate), or painted with a chocolate different from the chocolate the shell will be made from, or left as is (no colour or design).
Molten tempered chocolate is then poured into the cavities, which are then reversed upside down so that most of the chocolate pours out, creating a shell.
The shell is then filled with ganache, caramel, fruit compote, praline, others, or a combination of what was mentioned.
After the filling has set, a thin later of chocolate is poured over it to seal it within the bonbon shell.
The bonbons are then removed from the mold.
A lady bug bonbon resting on a dried cocoa pod. When I worked predominately as a chocolatier, most of the fun was coming up with fun designs such as this one.
A bonbon is essentially a chocolate shell that includes a soft center, usually a chocolate ganache, but today there are many types of fillings found in bonbons.
A bonbon differs from a truffle or an enrobed chocolate, because the outside is made before the inside. As well, an idea bonbon is usually (but not always) tempered with a high level of shine or gloss. Truffles and enrobed chocolates will not normally have that same effect.