This Diwali, celebrate with chocolate firecrackers

Sukhmeet Bhasin

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, October 20

Offering people a chance to celebrate eco-friendly Diwali, city-based home baker Neeru Bansal has found an innovative way to combine the tradition of exchanging sweets and bursting crackers with edible firecracker chocolates.

She prepares edible chocolates-shaped rockets, bombs, flower pots and chain crackers. The objective is to encourage people to opt for celebrating the festival of light in an eco-friendly way by saying no to firecrackers.

Neeru Bansal, who has a business of packing wedding gifts in the name of Shagun Creations since 2005 in Bathinda, said, “I decided to make firecracker chocolates to provide some eco-friendly alternative to people as kids love firecrackers and chocolates. So, if they get chocolate in shape of firecrackers on Diwali, there will be nothing like it. Moreover, it is a good way for families to feel the festival and celebrate a tradition without harming the environment.”

She said firecracker chocolates are made after melting and tempering the chocolate. Thereafter it is poured in to cracker-shaped moulds. Later, these are wrapped and a sticker is pasted so that each piece looks like a cracker.

The chocolates are available in a variety of flavours such as plain dark and milk chocolate, roasted almonds, fruit and nut and butterscotch, besides Oreo-flavoured chocolates.

Neeru said when she started working on it, she did not imagine that It would get a great response. At present, she receives orders from far off places, including Delhi and Chandigarh. She spent a month on researching firecracker designs and packaging by browsing online. She later created new designs for wrappers and got them printed. Neeru said, “I started my business of packing wedding gifts in 2005. Later, I also started organising cooking and art and craft workshops. This year, I started making these firecracker chocolates.”