Bond Street Chocolate: Cutting-Edge Easter Candy

CAPSULE REPORT: You’ve got a sophisticated palate. You want new food experiences. We’ve got a lot of them here for you today, starting with the chocolate statues in the photo.

Do you really want an Easter basket with jelly beans, marshmallow eggs and a chocolate bunny? Or would you rather have confections from a fine chocolatier who thinks outside the basket?

The answer may be “both”; but order early if you want to acquire these beautiful pieces of edible art from Bond Street Chocolate. They sell out!

To make these beautiful chocolate statues of Jesus and Our Lady of Guadeloupe (as well as Buddha and Moses), Bond Street Chocolate uses the finest E. Guittard’s 72% Coucher du Soleil, a dark, rich, smooth couverture chocolate with a creamy mouth feel and hints of thyme and jasmine. With all due respect, it is chocolate to pray for.

The chocolate is poured into handmade chocolate molds. The molded pieces are painstakingly hand-painted with edible gold leaf. They are beautiful to look at, and you can keep the chocolate for up to a year as an object d’art before you have to decide whether it’s art or food.

For those who want a box of classic chocolates, Bond Street Chocolate’s sophisticated bonbons are available in  traditional shapes, but with anything but standard flavor combinations—several with fine spirits such as Bourbon, Cachaça, Rum and Tequila, as well as florals and herbs such as hibiscus, lavender and tea. See them in the full review below, and send a box to your favorite chocolate gourmet. And if that’s not enough, we’ve revisited all of last year’s traditional Top Pick Easter Chocolates— chocolate rabbits, marzipan eggs and more. Let the good times (and the Easter eggs) roll!

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INDEX OF REVIEW

This is Page 1 of a two-page review. Click on the black links below to visit other pages:

• Page 1: Capsule Report
• Page 1: Bond Street Chocolate
  Overview
• Page 2: Beautiful Bonbons
• Page 2: Buy Bond Street Chocolate
  Online

MORE TO DISCOVER

• THE NIBBLE’s Gourmet Chocolate Section
  Reviews and articles about caramels, toffee,
  mints and other favorite confections.
• ARTICLE #2: More Top Pick Easter Candy
  Traditional chocolate rabbits, marzipan eggs, and more gourmet Easter candy from our favorite chocolatiers. Last year’s Easter Top Picks, updated for 2010.
• RECIPES: St. Patrick’s Day Cocktails
  Something new, something green, something fusion: lime-tasting Agwa liqueur, made from Bolivian coca leaves, make bright green cocktails.

Bond Street Chocolate Overview

Pastry chef Lynda Stern began her artisanal chocolate business from home. The brand is named not after London’s fashionable Bond Street—a fashionable shopping street since the 18th century—but after Bond Street in the NoHo neighborhood of New York City, the first address of the business. (A new retail shop is now located a few blocks away on East Fourth Street.)

Yet, these bonbons look like they have stepped right out of Bond Street. They belong for sale among the fashion boutiques and jewelers that grace the street (Armani, Bulgari, Burberry, Cartier, Chanel, Gucci, Harry Winston, Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Sotheby’s, Tiffany, Yves Saint Laurent and the like).

If you like fine chocolate, you’ll want to sample the wares. Step right up to the second page of this article to learn more about them.

—Karen Hochman

So smart and fashionable, these lavender ganache chocolates dotted with a candied lavender leaf would be equally at home in London’s Bond Street. Photo courtesy Bond Street Chocolate.