The great chocolate tour continued: Bella Sophia Chocolates

Today I drove about an hour to Huntington Beach for a chocolatier I'd found quite interesting, called Bella Sophia Chocolates. As I had already visited all of the chocolatiers in the area (some more than once: see andSons, Teuscher, and John & Kelly's), we had to cast a wider net.

It was a very tiny shop, probably the tiniest I'd see since Teuscher. It was with a collection of restaurants, including seafood, coffee, and ice cream. It was tucked away across from the coffee shop, but the tiny store was entirely made up for with the products within.

I had recieved a message from Steph, one of the owners of the store, and already had an idea of what to expect. It turns out, no words can describe what was to follow. The most aesthetic chocolates I have ever seen in my life were under a glass display case. Beautiful marbling effects created by a steady hand and dozens of colors of paint; painstakingly crafted, delicate, tartlets with paper-thin edible butterfly decorations; chocolate "macarons" with golden pearls and caramal and raspberry filling, piped in a perfect swirl. Practically everything one would expect from a chocolatier was there.

I took a while to make my choices, keeping in mind the palettes of my family. My brother loves passion fruit, my father loves coffee and caramel, etc. With these in mind, and adding in the chocolates I received courtesy of a very generous gift bag from Steph, I collected quite a few chocolates.

If I were to make a list and rate every chocolatier I'd ever been to, this would score very highly, probably in the top five or maybe even three. A very successful visit, and well worth the commute.

If you're able to read the tiny text from the newspaper clipping, you'll see it's a short biography on the chocolatier.

These are the many chocolates I collected from my singular visit. To name a few, the one with the butterfly on top is a mini tartlet, the large round chocolate just to the right of the center is a caramel "macaron", and the one just to the left of the center, the one with a coating of sugar and cinnamon, is a churro bonbon, a masterful recreation of a cinnamon churro.