The Los Angeles edition of DailyCandy is featuring my candy bars in Monday’s article! You can check it out here. (and in a cosmic coincidence, “Chad” is in the title of their NY article… so “shake your bonbon” and “pull your chad” at will)

And I’ll post more substantive posts soon. I have so many thoughts swirling around and so much happening that I really need to sit down and organize them… and not be so easily mollified by the outlet of Facebook status updates.

I’m going to try allowing BonBonBars to ship Priority Mail nationwide again, now that the weather is generally cooling down.  It usually takes 2 days, just like 2nd-Day Air, and sometimes 3 days, usually to rural areas and, oddly, the Chicago area.  Most packages will still be lined with styrofoam for at least a few weeks, though.  And if a region looks particularly hot, I may have to notify the customer and hold the package until it cools down.

I’m grateful that most of my bars survived the Summer, and that it’s now the Fall… but I can’t wait until Winter.  I’m so used to putting gel packs in my packages that I’m frankly a little scared to think that they’ll ever survive on their own again — trucks can get hot any time of the year! — but it’ll be so much easier and less expensive to ship.

I often have scraps of caramel, ganache, cookies, and such leftover at the end of my candy bar making, and I sometimes mismatch elements from different bars out of curiosity. For instance, my orange caramel with my Single Malt Scotch ganache is yummy, but I probably couldn’t sell that bar anytime soon b/c it would just be too confusing for everyone… I already have enough explaining to do for my customers at, say, farmers markets.

But a couple weeks ago, I tried some orange caramel on top of a piece of shortbread… and I remembered why the Twix bar was always my favorite mass-market candy bar — the textural combination of chewy caramel and crunchy cookie is spectacular. I didn’t want to create a knockoff of a Twix bar, but shortly after, I was also thinking about holiday offerings and how much I like pumpkin… and the idea of a Pumpkin Bar came to me - Spiced Pumpkin Caramel on top of Shortbread. It’d be like a Pumpkin Twix, BUT it’d also like a pumpkin pie — creamy pumpkin-y goodness on top of a “crust”… and then enrobed in chocolate

The problem is that pumpkin only purees so much and it has kind of a weak flavor. So, my pumpkin caramel experiments have been turning out ok, but with a pate de fruit-like bent — coarse-textured.

So, I turned to what a little voice inside my head has been whispering to me since the beginning of this endeavor: butternut squash. It makes a caramel that has a brighter flavor and a finer texture. I want to pursue it more.

But.. what could I call the candy bar? The Butternut Squash Bar? Even this punk chocolatier couldn’t do it — esoteric, and too long. My naming strategy has been to call bars according what they are — Malt, Orange, Caramel Nut, Scotch. Part of it is my lack of faith that I could consistently think of absolutely brilliant names like Snickers, but the major part of it has to do with the honesty of the company and its ingredients — I call those bars by those names because that’s what they’re made from and that’s what they taste like — not chemicals or anything artificial.

So… what to do with Butternut Squash? If it doesn’t contain pumpkin, I can’t call it The Pumpkin Bar… Or the “Pumpkin” Bar… Or the Pumpkin Pie Bar…. or even The Squash Bar (ha, just trying saying “I’ll take two Squash Bars” or “I can’t decide between the Squash Bar and the Caramel Nut Bar”). The Holiday Bar or Holiday Pie would be too vague — and quickly defeat itself — customers’ first question: “What is it?” Me: “Butternut squash caramel and shortbread.” Them: “That’s disgusting.” Me: “D’oh!” Awkward pause. Me: “But it’s great!”

Pumpkins and butternut squashes are both squashes. A cruel irony is that I remember butternut squash being called pumpkin when I lived in the UK. But I do not live in the UK now.

The only solution that I can think of is to call it the Pumpkin Bar (or Pumpkin Pie Bar?) and use a small percentage of pumpkin, just for the name’s sake, in addition to the butternut squash. It’s not all that evil, but I don’t know… Anyone have a better idea?

I should also mention, though, that this bar isn’t definite… I have to make sure that I have the production time and resources to make it (cookie-based bars take the most time to make)… and perfect the recipe… but it sure is tempting…

My Malt Candy Bar is part of Bon Appétit’s “Haute Halloween” feature on page 44 in the October issue, and it can also be found online here. It’s one of the updated Halloween favorites “that’ll satisfy the most sophisticated sweet tooth.”

Starting this Sunday, August 31, I’ll be selling my BonBonBar confections at the Brentwood Farmers Market in the morning at Gretna Green, off of San Vicente.  I’m really excited — Brentwood is a great, bustling farmers market and I’m looking forward to meeting new customers… and being a customer of quite a few stalls myself.

On the other hand, since I need to do production during one weekend morning, I will no longer be at the Century Park East market on Saturday mornings.  I may try to get into one more mid-week market, and then I think I’ll have my market situation set.