My friend Barbarella really focused on making gourmet chocolate bonbons as her Covid hobby. She started out making hot chocolate bombs, and something about working with chocolate as the medium caught her and now she makes tiny, delicious works of art.

She invited me over several months ago – before she was able to take a course with Louis Amado – and I didn’t take any photos to document her progress. (Her Instagram account is a good place to gauge how far she has come.) The chocolate she made that day was delicious and stunning to my eyes, but that class really stepped her up her game, as you can see in the final products down below.

We didn’t have any Christmas Eve plans this year, and neither did Barbarella and her husband David – so it was the perfect night to get caught up on her chocolatier progress. Plus we could enjoy holiday drinks and snacks with friends we love!

We started out selecting some colors and flavors and molds. Barb had some things in mind for us to do already, but Jordan and I were able to invent a flavor that didn’t 100% work out in the end. We suggested using the ruby chocolate – a sweet and naturally pink chocolate you should absolute learn more about – and filling it with a strawberry ganache with a dab of cookie butter on the bottom. Barb added a glittery white layer of color over the top. We also made a mint-ganache filled dark chocolate (in spectacular blue), ruby chocolate bars with a white chocolate and pop rocks half, and lemon and digestive biscuit semi-circles that I decorated with yellow dots and stripes.

Barb’s chocolate flavors (and decorations honestly) turned out much more precise and polished than anything I had a hand in. The cookie-bottom strawberry ended up being just a little too cloying in the ruby chocolate. Fortunately, Barb already had some new ideas from the experiment.

I’m that weirdo that doesn’t like mint chocolate- but I hear the gorgeous blue gas tanks were “like the world’s best Andies Mint” from a trusted source.