Castle Rock Candy

Hi, I’m Swaha.

Castle Rock Candy began four years ago in our kitchen with my teenage daughter. After a trip to India, she came home missing the sweets we’d tasted there: deeply caramelized treats made with jaggery, milk and ghee, rich legume and nut pastes, and the warm fragrance of cardamom, saffron and rose. Nothing we could find here came close, so we started making them ourselves.

We love chocolate just as much, though chocolate has no place in that tradition. So we began to wonder how those flavors would taste paired with chocolate. Neither of us knew how to temper chocolate or make bonbons, but I read everything I could, and we learned by experimenting until we were making bonbons of our own.

Since then, our travels keep finding their way into our flavors: yuzu and matcha from a vacation in Tokyo, and wine, tawny port and spirits from the desserts we loved in Germany. Closer to home, passionfruit and persimmons that I grow myself appear in the collection from time to time.

My kids are off at college now, but I’ve kept going for the joy of it. I love the artistry of designing each season’s collection, with its own colors and look, and I’m still refining my techniques and craft. Friends and family were my first tasters, and their encouragement is what led me to start sharing my bonbons more widely.

I’ve also become more mindful about what goes into each piece. I live with rheumatoid arthritis, and wheat and white sugar trigger painful inflammation for me, but I still believe in a little decadence now and then. So my confections are wheat-free, and I’m experimenting with natural sweeteners like maple, agave, palm sugar and dates, as well as zero-calorie ones like monk fruit, allulose and stevia.

I believe the world is a better place when people are happy, and these little indulgences are my way of bringing a bit of joy into your day.