Cocoa Bombs | Eric Torres- Garcia
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book, with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table, talking to cookbook authors.
Eric Torres-Garcia: Hello, everyone. My name is Eric Torres-Garcia. I am the founder of Cocoa Bombs, LLC, and author of Cocoa Bombs: 40 Make-at-Home Recipes for Explosively Fun Hot Chocolate Drinks.
Suzy Chase: Before diving into this book, I'd like to thank my new sponsor, Bloomist. Bloomist creates and curates simple, sustainable products that inspire you to design a calm, natural refuge at home. I'm excited to announce they've just introduced a new tabletop and kitchen collection that's truly stunning. Visit bloomist.com and use the code COOKERY20 to get 20% off your first purchase or click the link in the show note. Now, on with the show.
Suzy Chase: The hot chocolate cocoa bombs are a huge thing all over the internet and social media. And guess what? You are the original creator. Exactly two years ago, you went viral on TikTok with a cocoa bomb that got over two million views. How did that happen?
Eric Torres-Garcia: Yeah, first off, I'd like to say thank you for having me here today. As you mentioned, I am actually the original creator, our company is the original creators, of the hot chocolate cocoa bombs. I basically had been living in Europe for the past two years before I started Cocoa Bombs, saw a bunch of different candies, lived in a city that was very passionate about their confectionary industry. I worked in a gelateria in the city I lived in. Long story short, there was this particular candy, they have a very similar version here in the US, it's a chocolate sort of egg thing that you eat around edges and then on the inside you find this little toy.
Eric Torres-Garcia: This concept stuck with me after I move back to the states, and on December 2, it'll be our actually two year anniversary since the very first prototype of the cocoa bomb since we started the company, actually officially incorporated it. I remember just playing around with this idea of a hollow chocolate concept filled with tiny candies or something on the inside.
Eric Torres-Garcia: That particular day, I remember it was very cold. I was living in Boise at the time. A bunch of different things just came together, the universe, I guess, had these signs for me, because I remember just scrolling through Instagram and there was a lot of bath bomb videos and then my friend was actually making a cup of hot chocolate and something just snapped inside of me. I remember, I ran to the store because I was like, "Okay, I have to try this out," bought maybe 15 or $20 worth of stuff from the dollar store, from the supermarkets. Then I came back and I started playing around with the prototypes.
Eric Torres-Garcia: I got a couple of really, really bad prototypes, and then I eventually got one that turned out decent. I took that video and then I posted it to all of my personal social media pages, my Instagram, my Facebook, my Snapchat, all that stuff. People saw it and they were like, "Oh wow, where did you get that? That's really cool." Once I told them I made them, however, is when I never could actually convert the sales, if that makes sense.
Eric Torres-Garcia: I remember, I built a website in about a day, that's when www.cocoabombs.com was created. Then I went back to the video and instead of posting into all of my stuff, I actually ended up posting it to TikTok, which was just up and coming around the time. Once I did that, I remember I just captioned it, "Oh, who would buy these?" In the background I had, of course, our Christmas anthem, which is basically Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas. That's basically our holiday staple here in the US now for Christmas time.
Eric Torres-Garcia: We posted the video, and slowly but surely it started going viral. I remember a couple minutes after I posted it, it got like a thousand views and then went up to three and then five and then 10. Then seconds after it hit, I don't even remember, maybe like the 10,000 view mark, I got my first order. I was like, "Oh wow, this is so cool. If I get more, I can start working on them tomorrow."
Eric Torres-Garcia: I actually really underestimated the power of social media, the power of a viral video, because by the end of the day we had sold over I think it was like $7,000 worth of cocoa bombs. There was orders for hundreds of cocoa bombs coming in. At the time I had worked with three different types of chocolate, which was milk, white and dark, for the prototypes. Milk was the best, dark was a little bit more difficult and white was just really hard to do. But I remember I was like, "Okay, well, if I can get these three, then that's a good way to introduce this product into the world." The orders came through with a mix of all those three different kinds of cocoa bombs. I had only ever made one. I had only ever made one cocoa bomb. I remember when all these orders came at the end of the day, I was like, "Okay, this has got to like slow down or stop or whatever."
Eric Torres-Garcia: I remember that happened around noon, and then throughout the day we just sold X amount. Then by 7:00 or 8:00 PM, I was like, "Okay, this is a lot. I don't know how I'm going to do this. I'm not even an official business yet, I've only made one. I have to put a little bit of a stop to this." I remember I went to our website and I just basically stopped everything, just put, "Okay, thank you so much, you guys. Our first round of orders has been closed. We are officially 'sold out' for now. We will reopen the website. In the meantime, sign up for our newsletter to keep you guys updated on when we do our restock."
Eric Torres-Garcia: That was the very first day, December 2 of 2019, when the cocoa bomb was introduced to the world, when we started the company and when I realized that I had this viable product on my hands.
Suzy Chase: Well, you definitely got the answer to the question, would you buy this?
Eric Torres-Garcia: The answer was a resounding yes.
Suzy Chase: Yes. Could you walk me through the process of making a cocoa bomb?
Eric Torres-Garcia: What we have found is easiest to start with is using a milk chocolate base to make the items. There are a couple of tips for success when it comes to making chocolate bombs. We recommend actually using real chocolate more than anything. One of the things you really want to make sure is that you temper your chocolate correctly. When you work with real chocolate, temperatures are super important. I know when you're working with milk, and this is a little bit different depending on the type of milk chocolate you buy, but you want to make sure you heat it up first to out 104 to 113 degrees, or 40 to 45 degrees Celsius. That'll make sure that you get your chocolate nice and melted, that the crystals melt thoroughly.
Eric Torres-Garcia: Then once you start to temper is when you bring it down to a certain temperature. Tempering, you always want to make sure you cool it down from that 104 to 113 degrees to then 88 and 91 degrees Fahrenheit. When you do this, you actually bring the chocolate into what is called temper and that just allows you to be able to mold the items without having them harden into a item that turns chalky, that is difficult to unmold, that breaks apart. When you tempera your chocolate to those temperature ranges, you'll get a really nice and shiny look, you'll get a nice, and what is it called, a hard sort of feel, so if it breaks, it'll have this nice little snap. It'll be nice and shiny. It won't melt when you try to handle it with your fingers and so on.
Eric Torres-Garcia: Then the next tip I have, you want to make sure you are always giving it your personalized touch. There's so many different ways you can make these really. I've seen a lot of drizzle, a lot of sparkles, a lot of sprinkles, a lot of toppings. I really just recommend you do what works best for you. You can fill it with marshmallows, with candy bits, with caramel powders, hot chocolate powders, whatever you really want to do. I just really recommend you make it your own. There's hundreds and hundreds of combinations, a lot of different stuff you can do to make these. You always want to make sure you have nice and clean, shiny, dry molds. Then last but not least, make sure you just gave it your own personalized touch.
Suzy Chase: For home cooks, do we need any special equipment?
Eric Torres-Garcia: Not super special, but a lot of the stuff you already have at home would actually work. The only thing you are going to need, of course, are the silicone molds. Those can be found in a wide variety of places. We actually sell them online as well on our website. Basically, you just want to make sure that you have molds that are about 2.5 inches to maybe three inches max is what I would say. Anything really above that, you won't be able to fit into a mug.
Eric Torres-Garcia: When you're working with real chocolate, of course, you want to make sure you're always watching the temperature so I would recommend using a food great thermometer, just make sure that you stay within those temperature ranges. A lot of the temperature ranges can be found inside of our book for milk, white and dark chocolate. Again, the ones in our book are just what we have found is the average. You always want to make sure you consult with the chocolate manufacturer, just to make sure that you don't encounter any issues when melting, tempering, and molding and unmolding.
Eric Torres-Garcia: I mean, of course the next thing you do of course want to have is just your glass or microwaves safe bowl, silicon spatula, just for mixing the chocolate. We've found that a soup spoon works really well, so just a spoon except it's a little bit wider. This is just helpful for you to smooth your chocolate on the inside of the cavities, make sure you get nice and thick edges, nice and thick shells. Alternatively, you could also use a pastry brush, for some places that might get what we call weak spots, to make sure it doesn't break when you unmold.
Eric Torres-Garcia: Next thing, you just want to make sure you have a metal scraper, a metal spatula, a dough cutter, just so you can get the edges of your cocoa bomb half shells nice and clean. We found that parchment paper works really well too, whenever you unmold them and you just want to lay them down so that they don't stick to any surfaces, just parchment paper is fine.
Eric Torres-Garcia: You're also going to need a skillet or a frying pan, just going to heat it up on the stove, it's anywhere from usually about 10 to 20 seconds. Then use that to melt your half shell edges to then conjoint to your other half shell. Some cupcake liners, if you don't want to get too many fingerprints on the bomb, works really well. Just place one half shell inside of a cupcake liner, hold it with the cupcake liner on the inside and then grab your other half shell and then just place it on top as quickly as you can without handling the chocolate too much.
Eric Torres-Garcia: Then, of course, just for decorations, we found that a disposable sandwich bag works really well if you're at home. Just fill the bag with chocolate, cut a little edge off of the corner, and then you can use that as a drizzle bag to decorate and add drizzle, white, milk, dark, whatever. If you want to mix in some food coloring with white chocolate to give it a nice green, pink, red, you can do that as well.
Eric Torres-Garcia: After that, yeah, I mean, just make sure you keep an extra couple of utensils on the side, extra spoons in case you drop it, extra brush. This works really well whenever you start working with luster dusts, so those shiny, edible, nontoxic powders that will give your bombs some sparkly effects we found have worked really well.
Suzy Chase: For the holidays, you have a crushed peppermint cocoa bomb, a snowman cocoa bomb, a reindeer cocoa bomb, how many times can I say cocoa, and a Christmas lights cocoa bomb that looks just like an ornament. I personally love the snowman cocoa bomb. Can you describe this?
Eric Torres-Garcia: Yeah, of course. We found that the cutest recipe is really the one inside of our book. This is where you have a big marshmallow, so not the mini ones. You start getting your average size marshmallow, something that you would use to make S'mores, you grab one of those and then you can draw a little smile on it with your chocolate piping bag. You could use a red chocolate drop as a nose or even a little piece of a gummy candy, and then you can also add just some eyeballs. This is what we have as the head of our snowman cocoa bombs. What works best for its little arms too, is just a pretzel twist. If you just kind of break that apart to make it look like twigs.
Eric Torres-Garcia: You're going to have your marshmallow head stick to your cocoa bomb by just dabbing a little bit of chocolate onto the bottom of the marshmallow, a little bit of chocolate onto the top of the cocoa bomb, join them together. Then, yeah, I mean, you can use the white chocolate cocoa bomb as the snowman's body, and then just draw three little dots of chocolate onto the cocoa bomb. It makes this really cute snowman hot chocolate bomb.
Suzy Chase: I love it.
Eric Torres-Garcia: Yeah, it's a fun one to make. We really like this one and the reindeer one as well. You can use a lot of the ingredients from the snowman cocoa bomb to make your reindeer cocoa bomb as well.
Suzy Chase: The cocoa bomb is the cutest and most fun way to have hot chocolate and get us in the holiday spirit at the same time. If we buy your cookbook and we don't have time to make them, can we buy your cocoa bombs?
Eric Torres-Garcia: Yeah, of course. Making cocoa bombs is a time-consuming process. If you don't want to take the time to make them, they can of course be found online on our website at www.cocoabombs.com, so many different options you can find on our website. We also sell the silicone mold and of course the book on our website too, so if you do want to take the time, maybe use it as like a fun Christmas activity night, as a fun activity when you're on a date night, with your kids, at a school activity, you can find those stuff on our website as well.
Suzy Chase: Okay, here's the big question. What is your favorite cocoa bomb?
Eric Torres-Garcia: Oh, this is so hard to say. It's almost like-
Suzy Chase: Children?
Eric Torres-Garcia: I don't have any kids, yeah. I don't have any kids, but I do have three dogs that I consider my kids, so that'd be like telling me to pick my favorite puppy. I would have to say your dark chocolate just standard is my favorite, after that would probably be my dark chocolate peppermint. I love the peppermint flavor we use in our cocoa bomb. It's all naturally derived, we only use natural ingredients for our products, but I would have to say that our dark chocolate, dark chocolate peppermint, dark chocolate Mexican cinnamon, is by far my most favorite flavors of all the cocoa bombs we make.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?
Eric Torres-Garcia: Yeah, so you can find us online at www.cocoabombs.com. We could also be found and followed on social media on Instagram @cocoabombs, and then TikTok, @cocoabombs. Facebook, just type in Cocoa Bombs on the search bar, spelled just C-O-C-O-A B-O-M-B-S.
Suzy Chase: To purchase cocoa bombs and support the podcast, head on over to cookerybythebook.com. Thanks, Eric, for coming on Cookery by Book podcast.
Eric Torres-Garcia: Thank you so much for having me.
Outro: Follow Cookery by the Book on Instagram, and thanks for listening to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book.
