Cocoa Confection with Salted Caramel

Cocoa confections with salted caramel, sweet, salty and powdery soft

The cocoa confections with salted caramel from Chocolaterie Bruntz are French Truffes Fantaisie from Kingersheim in Alsace, rolled in dark cocoa powder and containing bits of caramel, cream, salted butter, and sea salt from Guérande. Not a hard praline, but 16 soft truffles that melt on the tongue and finish with a salty note.

The cocoa confections with salted caramel are cocoa truffles from Chocolaterie Bruntz in Kingersheim near Mulhouse, an Alsatian chocolatier since 1960. Inside the soft cocoa core are 5 percent salted caramel bits, cooked from sugar, glucose syrup, cream, and salted butter, seasoned with sea salt from Guérande. 16 pieces, 100 grams, in the orange box with the striped ribbon.

First comes the cocoa powder, dry and slightly bitter, then the core melts and releases the caramel, and right at the end, the salt adds a little punctuation. Creamy, salty, powdery. This is how Caramel beurre salé tastes when you put it into a truffle.

A truffle that finishes salty

The cocoa confections with salted caramel taste of dark cocoa, cooked cream, and that buttery caramel that Brittany has loved for decades.

The salt is not in the foreground; it acts more as a cleanser. After the sweetness of the core, a clean, slightly mineral finish remains, leaving you wanting the next truffle. The caramel bits are cooked firm and remain palpable within the soft core, a bit like brittle, only more yielding. The salt used comes from the salt marshes of Guérande on the Atlantic coast, where it is hand-harvested from shallow basins—gray, coarse, and mild.

We love them with a glass of cider; sweet meets tart, salty meets sparkling. Those wanting to amplify the Breton tone should pair them with Caramels au beurre salé from La Maison d'Armorine, then you have all the salt of Brittany on one plate.

Copra instead of cocoa butter, which is why they are called cocoa confections

Truffes Fantaisie are made without cocoa butter, using vegetable fat from copra and palm kernel, and therefore cannot be called chocolate in Germany, but rather cocoa confection.

The mixture consists of these fats, sugar, low-fat cocoa powder, and whey powder; in this Bruntz variety, salted caramel bits are added. Because coconut fat melts at around 24 degrees Celsius, the truffle disintegrates in the mouth without being sticky. That is the whole trick behind the famous melt that France has been celebrating since the 1930s.

The box likes it cool and dry, ideally between 15 and 18 degrees. In the refrigerator, the powder absorbs moisture; in the heat, the core becomes too soft. Set them out half an hour before snacking, and then everything is as it should be.

Since 1960 in Kingersheim, since 2024 with Quentin and Laurent

Chocolaterie Bruntz was founded in 1960 by three brothers in Kingersheim near Mulhouse and has been operating at Rue de l'Industrie since 1978, with about ten people working at the kettles and molds.

In 2005, the Ricou family took over; in 2024, the parents handed the business over to Quentin Ricou and his business partner Laurent Kalis. "All our chocolate figures are created entirely by hand," Laurent says of the company's Easter bunnies and Santas, and it is no different for the truffles. The smiling B on the box is the new logo from 2025; the recipe underneath is decades old, and as a partner of the Marque Alsace, the company is officially allowed to put its origin on the packaging.

You can find more from Alsace at Chocolaterie Bruntz, for example the cocoa confection with Crêpes Dentelles, and other pralines and truffles from France, Italy, and Germany. Salt can be so sweet.