About Cacao Boys
Chocolate lovers are in for a real treat when visiting our artisanal chocolate shop in Bala! We are making the most delectable confections to suit all tastes.
What is Cacao you ask? Well, chocolate is made from cacao (pronounced ka-KOW) beans which we then carefully craft through chocolate tempering into works of art for your eyes and taste buds to enjoy.
Excellent for self-indulgence or as a thoughtful, locally sourced, one-of-a-kind gift! All product is made onsite by Bala’s own local chocolatier, Jim Jeffrey.
In the heart of Muskoka
Cacao Boys is located at the corner of Hwy 169 and Elm St right on the main road in Bala, close to the Bala Community Centre and the heart of the famous Bala Cranberry Festival. We are members of the Muskoka Lakes Chamber of Commerce and are proud to be part of the local business community. Open since Dec 2022.
Shop the collectionHow it’s made
Every bonbon starts as an empty mold. This is the minute in between: cocoa butter airbrushed on, shells cast, fillings piped, the tray turned out.
Coloured cocoa butter is airbrushed into the mold, giving every shell its speckles and marbling.
Tempered chocolate coats the mold and sets into a shell thin enough to break cleanly.
Fillings go in layer by layer, piped while the shells are still sitting in the mold.
A final layer seals the base, then the tray is turned out and the bonbons drop free.
Every step happens onsite in Bala, in the same shop you can walk into.
Shop the bonbonsStop at our Bala chocolate shop for hand-painted bonbons, Belgian hot chocolate, baked treats, and gifts made onsite. Find us at 1004 Elm St while exploring downtown Bala and Muskoka Lakes.
Because it is made by hand, in small batches, from luxurious chocolate. We temper Valrhona and Callebaut couverture ourselves at the Bala shop, then finish every piece by hand. A grocery store bar is made by machine in the millions, often from lesser ingredients padded out with fillers. You are paying for the best chocolate we can buy, and for the artistry.
Look at the ingredients first. Good chocolate lists cocoa butter rather than vegetable or palm oil, and keeps the list short. It should snap cleanly, melt smoothly rather than waxily, and smell like chocolate before you taste it. Price follows the cocoa, so very cheap chocolate has usually replaced the expensive part.
A bonbon is a bite-sized chocolate with a thin tempered shell and a soft piped filling, usually ganache, caramel or praline. A truffle is hand-rolled and dipped, so its surface is irregular; a bonbon is cast in a mold, which gives it that smooth, polished shell. Bonbon is simply the French word for candy. Ours are hand-painted with coloured cocoa butter, so no two look quite the same. Eat one in a single bite, shell and filling together.
Valrhona from France and Callebaut from Belgium. Valrhona goes into our bars, bonbons and most of our year-round confections; Callebaut into dipped treats, our in-store baking and seasonal pieces. Both are couverture, meaning a high cocoa butter content that tempers to a proper snap and gloss.
No, and it is worth being straight about it. Bean to bar makers roast and grind their own cocoa beans, which takes far more space than our Bala shop has. We are chocolatiers: we buy finished couverture from Valrhona and Callebaut, then temper it and craft every confection here. The bean work is theirs. The chocolate you eat is ours.
Yes. Every bonbon, bar, cluster, bark and dipped treat is made onsite at 1004 Elm St by our chocolatier, Jim Jeffrey. The chocolate is tempered, hand-painted and finished here in Bala in small batches. Nothing is made elsewhere and shipped in to be sold under our name.
Where we can, yes. Our cranberries are the clearest example: they are always local Bala cranberries, grown at the marshes just up the road, and we use nothing else, in our chocolate bars and our in-store baking alike. Bala is the Cranberry Capital of Ontario, so the fruit does not have far to travel. The chocolate itself is couverture from Valrhona and Callebaut in Europe, but every piece is tempered and finished here in Bala.
