Are these the best chocolates in the world? Bonbons made in a little grey house in Minnesota, US, compete in the Oscars of craft chocolate

The perfume in the air at St Croix Chocolate Company’s production kitchen, in a little grey house in Marine on St Croix, in the US state of Minnesota, could make you swoon.

There was still more to do. Fill the chocolate shells with the caramel, crush the cookies into sand and mix with melted caramelised white chocolate and macadamia nut butter, seal the bottoms with more milk chocolate, chill, remove from the moulds and, hopefully, eat.

Judges in Italy were already tasting them. These bonbons, decorated to look like the ocean waves off Hawaii’s Big Island, won a gold medal in the Americas division of the International Chocolate Awards earlier this year.

8 of Hong Kong’s best boutique bean-to-bar chocolate makers

Dochterman had just sent a package of the macadamia bonbons off by air to Florence, where they are being evaluated against other winning ganaches, pralines and truffles from Europe and Asia in the world finals. The results of this prestigious competition, something like the Oscars of craft chocolate, will be announced at the end of November.

“My staff sometimes think I pick the most complicated things,” Dochterman said. “And they’re not wrong. No part of it is easy.”

She does not choose easy. She did not choose it when she decided to leave journalism at 45.

Dochterman, who grew up in rural Iowa, went to San Francisco to learn how to make sourdough. Then she took a class in artisan cheesemaking. Finally, she went to Chicago, to the French Pastry School. She became consumed by chocolate.

“We worked all day. We skipped dinner. I’m like, ‘Whatever. I don’t care. This is fun.’”

She opened St. Croix Chocolate Co. in 2010 with her partner, Deidre Pope – who runs the shop just on the other side of the little grey house, where this time of year the queues do not really end until most of Dochterman’s handiwork needs restocking. “I learned, at 61, I can still do an all-nighter,” Dochterman said.

Pope has an uncanny ability to remember customers’ faces and past orders. Pushing customers to become more adventurous is the mission. Dochterman scrunches up her nose when she says people have told her the macadamia nut bonbon, with its crunchy biscuit layer and caramel filling, reminds them of a Twix bar.

“I didn’t pattern it off a Twix bar,” she said. “But it connects to something in their memory, and that’s good.”

“They’re trying to understand our chocolate,” Pope said. “When we say we make European-style chocolate flavoured for an American palate, we also make turtles [a chocolate made with pecans and caramel]. We do chocolate-covered pretzels. We have something accessible, and then they taste it and it doesn’t taste like a Hershey bar, then they get curious about other things.”

Is chocolate good for you? Yes and it can even boost libido. But eat wisely

Pope might then steer them to Dochterman’s signatures – the Mamacita truffle, which combines chilli pepper and chocolate and looks like a shimmery autumn leaf, or a chocolate-enrobed caramel made with a purée of fresh-picked black raspberries.

“You do what you have to do so they get it – short of sampling, because we can’t afford it,” Pope said, laughing.

At US$2.50 per truffle, Dochterman cannot afford to make mistakes in the kitchen. And with her bonbons currently being judged in Italy, the cost is not all that is at stake.

This is the first time St Croix Chocolate Co. has competed at this level.

Five years ago, Dochterman won her first gold in the Americas division of the International Chocolate Awards.

“I could put my chocolates up against anyone’s and feel proud. It’s very exciting and very rewarding, having chocolate sent out to people who don’t know me, who don’t know my story,” she said. “They’re halfway across the world, and if they say it’s good, I feel pretty confident we’ve got it going on.”

Multitasking, she moved between a stainless-steel counter, where she was slicing slabs of caramels made with reduced apple cider from Maine, and the “green room”, where vats of melted chocolate are mechanically stirred at just the right temperature so that, when cooled to a glossy brown, you could almost see your reflection in a chocolate bar.

Using a hair dryer, she warmed the partially assembled macadamia nut bonbons for just a moment, so the bottom layer of milk chocolate would adhere to the filling. Then she slid the mould under a spout of chocolate, and used a plasterboard trowel to smooth the bottoms.

After giving them a few minutes in the cooler, Dochterman popped the finished bonbons out of the mould like cubes from an ice tray.

Good taste: introducing Hong Kong’s craft chocolate makers

They were blue-speckled works of art. Toasty, nutty, delicate, with a contrast of textures that gave way from one to the other.

“Two thumbs up,” Dochterman said. “Wash that down with a little Mountain Dew and I’m in business.”

Just do not say they are too pretty to eat.

“People always want to say that,” Dochterman said. “And I’m like, we’ll make more, I promise.”