Cuckoo for cocoa bombs: Hampton Roads bakers flooded with orders for America’s biggest trend in sweets

Perhaps you saw it on Facebook. Perhaps it was “Good Morning America.” But by now, you’ve probably seen them: little spheres of chocolate like cartoon bombs without the fuse, needing only heat to explode.

Fueled by TikTok videos, the hot chocolate bomb has become the runaway food trend of the holiday season, the bomb that won’t stop booming.

Within each bomb is a sweet world of cocoa and marshmallow and perhaps other things besides, peppermint or chai spice or a half-shot of bracing espresso. Pour hot milk over the top of each sphere, and watch its shell degrade disturbingly at its center. Then, sometimes suddenly, though never as alarmingly as on internet videos, it loses its integrity entirely and turns its insides out.

The contents spill into hot liquid until they coalesce into a pleasure familiar from most American childhoods: a steaming mug of marshmallowed hot chocolate.

It is a festive magic trick in a coffee mug, the miracle we’ve apparently all allowed ourselves in a pandemic holiday season otherwise mostly devoid of them.

Since mid-October, hot cocoa bombs have been an international phenomenon, with how-to videos lurching around social media in a way we used to feel comfortable calling viral.

The result has been chocolate pandemonium. Would-be home bomb-makers ordered so many silicone chocolate molds in early fall that even Amazon ran out of its supply; some professional bakers had to order their molds from Brazil. (You can again find molds online, and they might even arrive before Christmas.) Even some makers of meltable chocolate have had to shut down orders for the season, overwhelmed by the torrent.

Meanwhile local Facebook food groups in Hampton Roads have been deluged, over and over until world-weary fatigue set in, with variations on the same question: “Where can I buy a chocolate bomb?”

Though Target and Walmart and Trader Joe’s theoretically sell their own low-cost versions of chocolate bomb, in Hampton Roads they’ve been consistently tapped out: “Out of stock in stores near you,” quoth Target’s website. “No longer sold at Norfolk.” The same goes for Targets from Williamsburg to Hilltop.

For Hampton Roads bakers, it’s been both an unexpected boon — and also an unrelenting struggle to keep up with the phone calls and emails and special orders for bomb after bomb after bomb. Scratch-made versions of the treat will retail for anywhere between $4 and $8 apiece, often with cheeky designs and goofy flavor improvisations.

“We started selling them two weeks before Thanksgiving,” said Cassie Walker of mother-daughter bakery Flour Child in Virginia Beach, otherwise best known for their cookies, cakes and pies. “As soon as they hit the shelves, they exploded.”

The bakery is already busy for the holidays, Walker said, and demand for their pies and cake pops has also not dimmed during COVID times; crisis has a tendency to stoke people’s need for the wee indulgences.

But the bombs, laborious to make because bakers must first form the hollow chocolate molds before filling and decorating them, have transformed their business. The bakery turns out espresso chai and strawberry “unicorn” versions in addition to the basic hot chocolate, each one giddily decorated with sweet swirls and flourishes. They like the extra business, like all small businesses do, but the demand has also been overwhelming.

“It’s difficult to keep up the demand,” she said. “On and off we stop taking orders. We had to put a limit of six per order. They were buying them for clients, everyone in the neighborhood, all their classmates, and we were not able to keep up. We’ve still been selling out as fast as we can make them, faster than we can make them. It’s the biggest thing we’ve ever made.”

As we spoke on Dec. 11, Walker was in the middle of making a Facebook post saying the shop would temporarily stop special orders, though they’d still be working long days to make them for walk-in customers. (We were able to buy them on a Saturday evening.)

“We’re no longer taking orders because we have so many, and we have to keep baking our regular items, our cakes and cookies, and we’re running out of time,” Walker said. “Some of us are here 14 hours a day, trying to get them made.”

At Just Cupcakes in Norfolk, owner Stefanie Boebinger said she had no idea what she was in for when she started making the bombs this month.

“It’s blown my mind how large the demand has been for these,” she said. “I don’t remember seeing them in the past, but as soon as we started selling them, people have been calling. It’s super neat to watch.”

Boebinger said she started making them because customers kept asking for them.

“After several people in one day asked about them, we figured, ‘Let’s try them out.’ We hit the ground running.”

The bakery is in the process of expanding its repertoire, adding mocha and candy-cane peppermint and pumpkin spice versions, not to mention a green holiday-themed Grinch version adorned with a little red heart.

Since taking over ownership of the longtime bakery in February, she has also begun making a specialty out of vegan creations, and so soon she hopes to add a vegan version of chocolate bomb, avoiding the gelatin that’s a main ingredient in most marshmallows.

“We do enjoy the challenge of creating something vegan,” said Boebinger, who studied baking and pastry design at Stratford University. “Butter, milk and eggs are in everything.”

But while her shop relishes the business, she said she is surprised there were so many orders; local home bakers, she said, have made a burgeoning cottage industry out of hot cocoa bombs, and she thought her shop would get lost in the shuffle.

Indeed, countless home bakeries all over Hampton Roads have stepped into the hot-cocoa void, marketing their wares on Facebook and Etsy — and so have larger catering companies that include Virginia Beach-based Mermaid Catering.

For home baker Kristi Rind, who runs a bakery, Kristi’s Kreatives, out of her home in Virginia Beach, the cocoa bomb has completely changed her business.

“They’ve sold like crazy,” said Rind, who sells out-there creations like a Harry Potter-themed bomb set with little lightning bolts and white chocolate owls.

The chocolate bombs are not new; she’s been making them for years. But the popularity, propelled by TikTok, has been sudden. What used to be a part-time supplement to her income at a local shelter has turned into an eight-hour-a-day factory for chocolate bombs.

“This year it started at Thanksgiving,” she said. “I was focused on my cookies until the day after Thanksgiving, and I’ve been flooded since then. People all over the country have been talking about them since October, in the northern areas where it got colder faster. Here it came later, as it started getting colder. One lady yesterday ordered them, and she wasn’t even out of my driveway before she ordered another dozen.”

Rind says her chocolate supplier had even shut down orders because so many people have been requesting them, but she luckily had ordered a large shipment in advance. Sleep has become a treasured commodity, and she had to rely on family to help with the vast influx of orders.

“My business has tripled in size,” she said. “It was just me doing everything by myself, and it was so overwhelming that my daughter’s actually stepped up. I still have a full time job, and now it It was like two full time jobs I was doing at that point, and I was so exhausted. So now she does it during the day, and I do it at night.”

She’s grateful for the increase in orders, but also worries the trend will dissipate as soon as it started, subject to the passing fancies of social media.

“You just don’t know: Is it going to keep being busy? Or is it going to eventually die out?” she said. She’s already planning the next step in chocolate evolution: breakable chocolate heart molds for Valentine’s Day, which shatter when struck. For now, though, she hopes the cocoa bomb fever doesn’t let up.

“I think this is the new wave, and I hope it stays this way,” she said. “And I’m going to just keep riding this train, that’s for sure.”

Selected spots for hot chocolate bombs in Hampton Roads

Brick-and mortar retail

Flour Child Bakery, 1716 Pleasure House Road, Virginia Beach, 757-464-1455, iloveflourchildbakery.com

Just Cupcakes, 340 W. 22nd St., Norfolk, 757-625-1000, justcupcakesva.com

Nana’s and Papa’s Soups and Stews (at Vintage Vibe), 232 Centerville Turnpike N, Chesapeake, facebook.com/nanaandpapassoupsandstews

Petite Sweets, 333 High St., Portsmouth, 757-966-1538, petitesweetsportsmouth.com

Sinful Treats, 1301 N. King St., Hampton, 757-637-7069, sinfultreatshpt.com

Sub Zero Virginia Beach, 1255 Fordham Drive, Virginia Beach, 757-201-2233, subzeroicecream.com

Catered, online-ordered and home bakeries

Confections by Kelley (Suffolk), facebook.com/confectionsbykelley

Guilty Pleasures Treats (Norfolk), guiltypleasurestreatz.com

Let's Eat

Weekly

---

We're serving up restaurant reviews and news about the local food scene every week.

By submitting your email to receive this newsletter, you agree to our Subscriber Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

>

Gunther’s Gourmet Hot Cocoa Bombs (Hampton), 757-646-6257, facebook.com/gunthersgourmethotcocoabombs

Impressional Sweets (Hampton), https://www.impressionalsweets.com/

Kristi’s Kreatives (Virginia Beach), bit.ly/KristisKreatives

Mermaid Catering, 485 S Independence Blvd., Virginia Beach, 757-358-7904, mermaidcatering.com

Storybook Bakery (Chesapeake), storybookbakery.com

___

Matthew Korfhage, 757-446-2318, matthew.korfhage@pilotonline.com