I’m pretty proud of these bars (and the heart-shaped ones too, for that matter). For one thing, the tempering is just perfect, and combined with the speckled look that the vanilla seeds add, they look like something you’d buy from a shop. A rather expensive shop at that. Secondly, the idea sprang out of my head on a walk yesterday morning; by the end of the day, they were wrapped up in boxes ready to be taken to work tomorrow. Which is satisfying.

I have been toying with the idea of doing a cremè brûlée ganache for a few months now, egged on (hohoho. See me after — Ed.) by a few people around town. After getting a litre of vanilla paste on Friday, I thought it was time to do something with that idea, but I was stuck on how to incorporate the sugar shell — a rather important part of the brûlée. My mind kept on returning to the idea of an isomalt tuile broken up and dispersed around the ganache. Which would have provided a crunch, but isomalt doesn’t turn a caramel colour, so it wasn’t quite working in my head. Then I started thinking about Crunchies. Although the colour would be right, the problem with them is that once they set, they break messily and would be a pain to incorporate in the ganache. Plus, I wasn’t sure how well they’d keep their crunch as they’re rather hydroscopic.

Then I wondered. What would happen if I flattened the honeycomb after I poured it out? And instead of a ganache, I’d just use white chocolate, but adding dried vanilla seeds in to give it the creamy vanilla flavour. After an experiment, I discovered that this approach allowed me to create a set of flat shards that I could easily portion out between the bars and the bonbon mold, and the solid chocolate should preserve the crunchiness of the honeycomb. Although I have yet to really test that, as they’ve been disappearing pretty fast.