Jardi Chocolates founder opens Atlanta Candy Kitchen with turtles

When pastry chef Jocelyn Dubuke had the idea to create Atlanta Candy Kitchen (ACK), she knew two things: it had to be fun and it had to be an inventive way to get people to rethink their nostalgic candy. childhood.

Dubuke, the founder of JARDÍ Chocolates, has been making hand-painted filled chocolates, chocolate bars and chocolate-covered snacks since opening the business in 2015. She uses no preservatives, additives or colors in her process of making candy, including painting with cocoa butter to stylize chocolates.

“I like to use real ingredients. You can’t do better than what nature gave you.

But Dubuke saw a need for something more in the Atlanta candy market: candy that sparked a sense of childlike joy in his customers. ACK’s tagline “traditional, elevated treats” refers to this sensibility as the “little sister” that is “the life of the party.”

Dubuke admits, however, that opening Atlanta Candy Kitchen was really because of his love of turtles.

Dubuke set out on his first adventure with turtles in 2023, a quest that added a new member to his kitchen team: a coating machine affectionately named “Lucy.” “Luna,” a tempering machine, was already holding down the fort. Before Lucy arrived, Dubuke dipped each turtle by hand. That’s almost 2,500 hand-dipped candies.

After handing out a few as Christmas gifts, Dubuke’s family encouraged her to sell the turtles. While Dubuke runs ACK and JARDÍ solo, his family plays a vital role in his confectionery business.

“I was lucky because my brother is a mechanical engineer. He told me about rewiring things (on machines). My sister is my sounding board for my ideas,” Dubuke told Rough Draft. “My mom likes to taste everything, and my dad also owns his own business, so he’s kind of my sounding board for business decisions.”

While most turtles default to incorporating powdered milk and untoasted pecans, Dubuke takes a very different approach to his turtles. She starts by making the caramel herself. This is a 1.5 hour slow cooking process. She also roasts pecans to bring out the right flavor notes and uses heavy cream and butter to produce the candy’s rich chocolate coating and caramel center, giving the turtles a perfectly soft and chewy texture.

But there is another secret: salt.

According to Dubuke, his turtles are seasoned rather than heavily salted, which gives “a very cooked milk flavor” to the clusters of chocolate-covered nuts.

And Dubuke’s turtles were just the beginning. Atlanta Candy Kitchen also offers chocolate covered pretzels. Dubuke’s turtles and pretzels are dipped in dark, milk or white chocolate.

She will eventually sell fudge, including peanut butter and peanut butter brittle, and has a few other unnamed confections in the works. One such candy that Dubuke is currently developing begins with an airy burst of vanilla bean marshmallow and ends with a base of bright passion fruit mixed with white chocolate. It’s incredibly light with a blend of subtle, rich vanilla and lingering tart notes from the fruit. A strawberry version should be available soon.

“(They’re) kind of a play on s’mores. Chocolate and marshmallow are just happy together. But I didn’t want to do the cookie or graham cracker element…and again, real ingredients. Egg whites. This Ugandan vanilla. She sources her vanilla from chocolatier Xocolatl in Atlanta.

Dubuke also tapped into childhood nostalgia in other ways for ACK. She collaborated with graphic designer Stephanie Rachmeleron on the packaging, taking inspiration from 1980s candy cigarette boxes but with a clean, modern twist. Two turtles are packaged together in a clear box the size of a deck of cards with a playful logo using Atlanta’s iconic Ferris wheel with a peppermint candy swirl in the center front, and a version of the seal of the city ​​incorporating the initials ACK on the back.

A pair of turtles costs $8.

“Cooking and baking has always been my way of connecting with people. So, I want people to be happy when they taste my food; I want them to say, “Oh my God, it was worth it.” And I want it to make people smile, adults or children.

The Atlanta Candy Kitchen website goes live on May 6 and orders can be shipped to people’s homes or picked up at JARDÍ in Chamblee. To keep up to date with new candies, Dubuke suggests following ACK on Instagram.