Katryana Zide / Owner, Katryana Zide Chocolates, St. Helena, California

New business owner Katryana Zide is in the thick of her first holiday season as a chocolatier, tackling the challenge of showcasing layers of flavors and textures into just 14 grams of holiday bliss.

Katryana works with private chefs in Napa Valley, making chocolates for winery dinners, events and virtual tastings. Custom boxes are also popular as wedding favors.

So far, Facebook and Instagram have been Katryana’s main platforms for attracting clients with photos of vibrant, decorative shells and rich-looking, lava-like interiors. The trick is getting the flavors right.

Katryana says white, milk and dark chocolate are the basis of any filling but can easily overpower milder flavors. The Perfect Purée’s bold, true-to-fruit flavors help her achieve the balance she needs to make the inside of every truffle taste as good as it looks on the outside.

After some trial and error, she now fills her bright yellow Bananas Foster Bonbon with caramel and The Perfect Purée Banana Puree.

“Originally I tried to make the caramel using other brands or even making my own banana purée — all of which didn’t result in the texture and clean ripe banana flavor I needed. Sometimes the moisture content was off with a purée, which created an under-crystalized caramel. Other times the flavor was more starchy than ripe. Eventually I tried The Perfect Purée Banana Puree and was absolutely delighted to find the consistency in flavor and water content was exactly what I required.”

The Perfect Purée Chipotle Sour blend became just the flavor she was looking for when it arrived in a sample box. The earthy spiciness of chipotle, mesquite and citrus gives the pâte de fruit gel in her Chipotle Sour Bon Bon a unique balance of heat and smoke. She pairs it with a dark chocolate shell because white or milk chocolate would be too sweet and elevates the spicy-smoky flavor of the gel with a layer of earth-toned chocolate-chipotle ganache.

“The balance between acid and spice was something I really wanted to showcase in a truffle and this resulted in a beautifully balanced sour, spicy, dark chocolate truffle,” Katryana says.

She now relies heavily on The Perfect Purée for consistent clean flavors.

“They enhance my production by providing ingredients that I normally wouldn’t be able to easily create or consistently source. The Perfect Purée alleviates the challenge of creating consistently bold flavors for appreciative palates.”