So, in the craziness of setting everything up and making my bars and marshmallows and sending them out, it didn’t really register in my mind that the product descriptions on my BonBonBar site were seriously lacking.  The bars and what’s inside them are so important to me and the company, and they were displayed with only the most cursory descriptions (um, just which mixed nuts are in the caramel nut bar???)– and too much relevant info was only in the FAQ page.  It might not be a fabulously exciting development to all involved, but now that it’s fixed, I feel so much better, however tinged with regret for people who have already sailed by the site.

I’m a little skittish about putting these up here, since these have all been printed already and are being shipped… but I think these mallow people are adorable, and capture the marshmallows’ personalities in a fun way.

The images are resized here, so they’re a little fuzzy.

Vanilla Marshmallow

Passion Fruit Marshmallow

And for a variety of reasons, I had to change the boy on the Malt Bar. The new face of the Malt Bar is a little older and a little more demure, but still a cutie, I think…

Even though I spent a while trying to figure how to offer the bars for sale (in sampler boxes or mono-variety boxes), now that www.bonbonbar.com is live, it doesn’t seem fair to govern the choices to such a degree.

So, we’ve expanded the purchasing options. Now you can simply order as many bars as you want and in whatever varieties you want. You can adjust the number of the bars after you add a variety to your cart.

My boxes fit 3 and 6 bars, but for other amounts, I’ll probably adjust the interior with a filler of my recycled tissue paper as nicely as I can to pack them securely. So, a free choice selection of, say, 5 bars would probably not be a great option for a gift box, but could be mighty nice for a casual candy bar experience.

I apologize to people who have already ordered — I really hope that you still got what you wanted.

And yes, the candy bar page now looks like it’s in triple vision instead of double vision, but we’re working on it!

And thanks to Sara for bringing up the variety issue in a comment!

In short, feel free to shop at www.bonbonbar.com!

The longer story is that the current website design is temporary until my real site kicks in. But I assure you, the candy bars and marshmallows are quite ready to be made for you — and I hope you like them!

I can also assure you that the official website should come into maturity within a week, and it’ll be worth the wait. I’ve received screenshots of different pages from my wonderful website designer, and I’ll admit that when I have a few spare minutes, I find myself opening the files and just looking at them… I can’t help it. There it is — like a new home that’s almost completed!

Almost two years ago, when I moved to Napa with very little idea of my professional future and an impish idea to start a blog to share what I was learning and to chronicle my culinary development, I never thought that it would lead here. I feel like I’ve grown up online!

It’s all so real now — this somewhat crazy idea that I started playing with almost a year and half ago. I hope to be able to blog at least a little bit more now (or maybe after the holidays!), but at least most of the initial footwork work is done. Starting a business has been a lot about research, making decisions, developing relationships, and making things happen, one way or another. Of course, the next phase of developing the business won’t be any less time consuming, but I’m feeling good about it.

This endeavor is not as easy to write about as making desserts, but it certainly is exciting to do. Every day has been a rollercoaster of small victories and sometimes puzzling setbacks. It involves dealing with people a lot more than making a pie in my kitchen (or even in a restaurant kitchen), and I am naturally reluctant to write about people on my blog without their ability to write in kind and with full consent of what I say — it just doesn’t seem fair (and it’s why I rarely mention people by name), even if I’m praising them. So, that makes writing a little harder, too, and I have to develop a slightly new voice to write the blog with.

Also, I’m making 4 products (ahem, the Caramel Nut Bar, the Malt Bar, Vanilla Marshmallows, and Passion Fruit Marshmallows). Altogether, that’s 5 recipes total, plus tempering milk and dark chocolates. Over and over and over again. I learn something new every time I make them — or find out I didn’t know what I thought knew — and that minutiae is also hard to translate to blog posts. And after working so hard to fix problems and improve techniques for such specialized recipes, it’s also difficult to think about just giving that away straightaway. And I hope to have another innocent farmers market day soon - I don’t remember the last time I had a carefree market day.

So, I have to thank all of you for your support and patience! I’ve been neglectful, but without the blog, none of this would have come about. And I’ve truly appreciated all of your comments and feedback, and I hope that you enjoy eating the bars and marshmallows even more than reading about them!

And just so you know, orders have to be received by Tuesdays at Noon PST to go out the same week. Otherwise, they’re rolled over to the following week, so that the confections don’t sit in a warehouse over the weekend.

So, this post feels like a bit of a milestone — like my State of Sweet Napa post last year. Let’s see where all this goes!!!