I came across Pandora Bell‘s salted caramels in Fallon & Byrne when I had salt on the brain and was thinking of making sea salt ice cream. Finding salted caramels in Ireland was a bit of a surprise, and since I munched down the whole lot quickly enough, I didn’t even notice that Pandora Bell is an Irish company.
While they don’t make their own sweets, Pandora Bell does bring in some top confections from around Europe. Besides the seductive caramels, they also have fetching lollies and deliciously old-school honey nougat, wrapped in paper.
Nicole Dunphy, the woman behind the Limerick-based company says, “A love of cheap flights led to a discovery that we had to share… artisan food producers make sweet things in a way that has never been changed by time.
“The Pandora Bell philosophy is that a high quality daily treat is a healthier and more satisfying way to enjoy sweet things than a mouthful of artificial flavorings. Confectionery made from honey, eggs, nuts, butter have to be more delicious than sweets manufactured with ingredients that sound more suitable for a laboratory than a kitchen.”
That’s a philosophy we can get behind, and we’re delighted to announce we’ll be offering the full range of Pandora Bell products as part of our 2010 retail collection in our Dingle and Killarney shops.
One thing that’s sure to get people’s attention is their Easter eggs – real, sterilised egg shells filled with chocolate truffles.
It’s taken all my self-discipline not to crack open one of the little eggs right now as I write this.
Maybe I should, because it might be my last chance. They seem quite reasonably priced, and my guess is we’ll sell out of them well before Easter…
Technorati tags: Pandora, Bell, Limerick, sweet, caramel, Easter
