Those of you that have tried the real thing from Wizarding World of Harry Potter, in Japan or Orlando, did you find yourself utterly disappointed at how pathetic they were? I did. I spent close to $10 on a packet of five Exploding Bon Bons, and they did not even come close to what I was expecting. Hell, it did not even have a teeny bit of fizz to it. I ate one, glared at the disappointment that they were, and didn't touch the rest.
I decided that that wouldn't do and I had to find a way to properly portray my idea of how Exploding Bon Bons should taste. The bonbons are meant to contain dynamite coconut and pure cocoa powder, but the version at Wizarding World had neither. Dynamite Coconut is an entirely fictional food item, but I could replicate it with regular coconut, could I not? The recipes I found online were similar but not quite what I had in mind. None of them contained coconut, so that failed to tick one of the two most important boxes.
I then researched bonbons, and found that they were, in a nutshell, small pieces of confectionery coated in chocolate. This left me a huge window of opportunity to create a recipe that matched the idea I was looking for. To qualify as a bonbon, it had to be coated in chocolate, but other than that, I could do whatever the hell I wanted! So, there were three important things that I had to consider: cocoa powder, chocolate coating and coconut.
There is this popular dessert here, they're known as coconut balls, and they're so delicious and ridiculously easy to make, made with only condensed milk, desiccated coconut, cocoa powder and crushed biscuits. However, I didn't want to use crushed biscuits, so I skipped that in the recipe. I couldn't find Pop Rocks anywhere near me, so I settled for popping topping. It's close enough but doesn't pop as much as I'd like. However, it does crackle and pop upon contact with moisture.
I did a few trials, and my first trial was coating the balls in the rocks, then dipping it in chocolate, but the candy didn't want to stick to the balls so that was a no go. I tried dipping them in chocolate first, then in pop rocks, and then in chocolate again, but it added too much weight and dimension to the balls and it didn't look attractive. So, I tried coating them in the chocolate and then sprinkling a bit of the rocks on the top. This yielded only a tiny amount of popping fun, so I decided that it was much easier to just coat the entire chocolate dipped ball in the rocks. Problem solved.
I had to dip them on the day that I had the party because chilling the bonbons in the fridge overnight with the rocks made the coating melt and lose their popping/crackling quality. I coloured the white chocolate with yellow chocolate colouring, as it made the rocks stand out much better and it looked quite explosive and exciting this way.
Ingredients:
1 cup desiccated coconut
1 1/2 teaspoons cocoa powder
3 tablespoons condensed milk
1 teaspoo vanilla bean paste/extract/essence
375g white chocolate buttons
Powdered chocolate colouring, I chose yellow
1 packet popping topping or Pop Rocks
Method:
1. Combine the cocoa powder and coconut in a bowl, and then add the vanilla and condensed milk. Mix until everything comes together and you can form balls easily.
2. Scoop out 1/2 tablespoons of the mixture and form each one into a ball. Set down on a tray lined with baking paper. Chill for a few hours.
3. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler or the microwave, making sure not to burn the chocolate.
4. Spoon a small amount of the chocolate into a small bowl and stir in the colouring. I do the colouring in a separate bowl because the chocolate will end up with tiny lumps that won't ever dissolve properly, so it's easier to literally beat it into a small amount of melted chocolate and then add it to the rest.
5. Dip the balls into the chocolate with a fork, toothpick or a dipping implement, tap against the side of the bowl to get rid of excess chocolate and then coat with the popping toppings. Set aside on the tray. The chocolate will set quickly because of the cold temperature of the balls, so you won't need to chill the bonbons.
6. Now, eat them all!
This went down quite a treat with everyone, and because it was so easy to make, I wouldn't say no to making this again another time. It was fun seeing everyone chomp down on these thinking they're expecting something like cake pops with crushed candy coating only for them to find out that it's actually a chocolatey coconutty fudgy centre, and then they're surprised by the popping sensation.
I'm going to upload a recipe for the Butterbeer soon, it's almost identical to the one from Universal Studios, except that the colour of the beer is darker than the one from WWOHP. I've also got a post planned for the pumpkin pasties, just to round things out.
Are you going to make these Exploding Bon Bons yourself?
