Donovan Family Confections

Family Matters
Donovan Family Confections, Wallingford
May 2024

Family.

There are certain days throughout the year that we take time to recognize family and what our unique dynamics mean to each of us. Mother’s Day, obviously, is one such day. Arguably the most important one of all.

And my wife, who is a great mother, rather enjoys sweets. Especially chocolate and the more expensive, usually, the better. (To be fair, that’s not really true. She likes Hershey Bars. I think I’m projecting, as I do not like Hershey Bars or cheap chocolate. Yeah, I’m totally projecting.)

Anyway, how fortuitous for me the husband/dad and she the wife/mother that Donovan Family Confections had opened up a storefront in August 2023 and I would be nearby once in a while for my son Calvin’s soccer reasons.

Ah, yes, my son Calvin. He’s part of our family too. And he also rather enjoys sweets. Having just turned 13, he couldn’t care less about quality. At his age, it’s more just a quantity thing. And surely he loves his mother and would respect her enough to allow her to enjoy her $51-for-16 bonbons in peace and at her leisure. Surely.

Family. As in Donovan Family Confections.

As you could have guessed, this business is a family affair. Katie Donovan, with her parents, David and Susan Donovan, run the shop and make the chocolates. And that’s nice. But there’s more to the Donovan story here.

Much more.

From a Hartford Courant article, which I won’t link… wait, hold on… before continuing, let me provide you with a palate cleansing picture. You’ll know why in a sec.

Katie Donovan has had difficulty swallowing her whole life, so much so that she had to have her esophagus removed.

Donovan was suffering from achalasia, the inability to swallow. Doctors had to pull her stomach up through her chest to replace her esophagus, but its flexibility means a sac can form in it and food can get stuck on the way down.

That hasn’t stopped the plucky Donovan, 27, who with her family has launched a high-end chocolate shop, Donovan Family Confections, in her hometown of Wallingford, where she sells bonbons that melt in your mouth, so that even Donovan can enjoy a bite of sweetness.

You didn’t see that coming, did you? It’s okay, here:

Family. Sharing and caring.

No less than an hour went by in the CTMQ-household before Calvin was asking to eat one (or more) of Hoang’s bonbons. Our gift to her on her day. Thirteen-year-olds are crazy, man.

I pointed out that he’s allergic to the whole box, hoping that the one in there he was actually allergic to would scare him off. Nope. He found my cheat sheet of the flavors that I made Hoang and called out my lie.

He tried the divide and conquer strategy – he’d asked me and I gave an emphatic no, but that didn’t mean Hoang would say the same.

The first bonbon she tried was the Mango Black Sesame; the very one Calvin is allergic too. Here is what it looked like:

That’s me holding it because Hoang did not like it.

Family. Dad’s are for eating whatever the other people don’t finish. I know my role and I fill it with skill and fortitude. (Though I rather liked this particular unique flavor.) As it turned out, Hoang liked every other flavor more than the first she’d tried.

And there were a lot of them.

As she slooooowly ate her way through the treats, her one mild complaint was regarding the texture. They were all soft and “melty” with no texture, save for the excellent graham cracker bottoms that several featured. We had no idea there’s an explanation for that… from The Courant article:

“They’re basically a one-bite kind of chocolate, really high end, and my goal was I was always craving desserts here and there,” Donovan said. “I’m not a big sweets person, but I’ve always liked and enjoyed my desserts when I could eat them.”

Donovan can’t really eat a slice of cake, though, so she thought, “Hey, why don’t we put an entire dessert into just one bite.

“So my favorite dessert is raspberry cheesecake. So we have a chocolate that has the shell and then inside of it there’s a layer of soft raspberry jam, a soft vanilla bean cream cheese ganache, and then a little thin, melt in your mouth crust layer. And it’s just one bite and it’s down,” she said.

So yes, these softer, ooier, gooier bonbons come from Ms. Donovan’s desire to create something delicious out of her inability to eat solid foods after having her esophagus surgically removed in 2016.

Donovan sources their chocolate from Belgium, Switzerland, and Africa. Several of the flavor combinations are unique (the aforemented mango black sesame, the dark chocolate basil yuzu one) but most are takes on beloved desert flavor combinations like the raspberry cheesecake.

I know, you’re still wondering how Katie Donovan is doing. Me too!

“I struggle pretty much daily with just getting the bare minimum of nourishment to get through the day,” she said. “Every time I eat, I struggle to get my food to pass from my stomach into the rest of the digestive system. So that comes with a lot of fighting to keep food down, getting sick often, exhaustion and discomfort, especially in the chest, the food that just sits there, unable to be digested.”

Goodness. What a tough young woman. She deals with stuff like having her pseudo-esophagus forming a pouch above where it passes through her diaphragm, trapping food in her chest – causing pain and other concerns.

But okay, I know. Chocolates. Look at these beauties:

Their Instagram and Facebook pictures is like bonbon porn. Each one is so pretty. Every time when Hoang would eat one, she’d marvel at it and take what seemed like a moment in prayer before destroying art. “It’s so pretty…”

Meanwhile, Calvin’s strategy was paying off. He glommed down the cinnamon bun bonbon (“bussin’,” said he), the creme brulee (“pretty good, I never had creme brulee before), and the milk chocolate Oreo Cream (“delicious!”).

I was all about the Banoffee Pie – banana and coffee. I loved it.

And Hoang had all the rest, at a one per day clip. Her favorite, by far, was Toasted Coconut Caramel. In fact, that one bite took her back to an early job at an ice cream shop and the scent and taste memories of working there. Yes, that’s what a good chocolate can do; make you downright wistful and emotional. Other standouts were key lime pie, dark chocolate espresso caramel crunch, passion fruit cheesecake, milk chocolate London Fog, and dark chocolate mint.

Family.

After getting yelled at for being selfish multiple times, Calvin’s annoying perseverance for sweets won out, and we love him no matter what. Katie Donovan’s family is supporting her small business that sells out of a rather nondescript storefront at the end of a nondescript strip of stores along a nondescript stretch of Route 5 in Wallingford near the North Haven and Hamden borders. Her creations are beautiful, unique, and delicious.

Katie’s achalasia is very rare and she will likely need more surgical procedures down the road, as she is completely dependent on gravity to get food from mouth to stomach. She will never lead a “normal” eating life, and yet here she is, with her mother and father, producing these artful pieces of chocolate heaven.

Amazing.

Happy Mother’s Day to every mother out there, and may you be so lucky as to get some of Katie’s creations at some point as well.

Donovan Family Confections (Facebook page)
CTMQ’s Connecticut Chocolate Trail