ChoccoDiva

Brigadeiro Braggadocio
ChoccoDiva, West Hartford
November 2025

What a gift to have a new entry onto the CTMQ Connecticut Chocolate Trail in my hometown! It’s nearby and it’s delicious!

It’s also expensive as all get out, but the work that goes into these unique treats justifies that. Or so I’m told.

The “ChoccoDiva” is Priscilla Pedrosa who learned to work with chocolate when she was 12-years-old. She’s never stopped making her bonbons and has only gotten better and more detailed over the years. She opened her store on Park Road in West Hartford in May of 2025 and it has been a purposeful build to be more than just a chocolate shop.

ChoccoDiva will also sells coffee and honey bread and ice cream and cakes and fondue… with a cafe coming at some point as well. That’s all great, but this here website really only focuses on the chocolates made by our state’s chocolate makers.

And ChoccoDiva makes some unique chocolates: brigadeiros. Impossibly detailed and perfect little sweet balls of joy.

But let me back up little bit. This place is also selling InstaCred. There’s the fake livewall with some accoutrements that I believe are there to be ‘Grammable. I can’t know for sure, because that’s not my world, but I do know the brigadeiros themselves are quite photogenic – despite my poor attempts on this page.

I have spent way too much time trying to figure out why there are two c’s in “Chocco” to no avail. “Chocolate” in Portuguese and Spanish is just “chocolate” with one c. The “diva” part, though, is easy: it was inspired by a friend who once called Pedrosa “the diva of chocolate.”

I entered the cute little shop while some others were leaving and two more joined me in entering. I let them go first so I could get my bearings. It was then I looked at the menu and… Holy Diva!

Six little brigadeiros would be $20. A dozen, $40. I guess the $60 for 2 dozen is a bargain.

Hey, good for the ChoccoDiva. The two women in front of me didn’t bat an eyelash and ordered up $70 worth of chocolates. The employee also didn’t bat an eyelash. I hate to point this out, but this is on Park Road in West Hartford, not in the part of town where these prices are commonplace.

Now, with the exception of using a machine used to temper the chocolate, all of the food is made fresh by hand daily, so there’s that. And each brigadeiro is artfully decorated and crafted. In fact, when the young woman was packing my 6 choices (I’m a cheapskate), she didn’t place one as delicately as she’s have liked, so she gave me a different one. Wow. Impressive.

Brigadeiro is a traditional Brazilian dessert that is made with condensed milk, dark chocolate, and a little bit of butter. The mixture gets cooked until it comes to a boil and, once cooled, it is rolled into little balls, resulting in a soft, truffle-like appearance.

The balls are coated in various toppings and various flavors are added to provide the variety I saw in the case. As I understand it, brigadeiro is the actual mixture above, and is used in other desserts as well. Pedrosa uses it as frosting for her cakes, for example.

It sounds impossibly sweet, but they really weren’t at all. Let’s see, what flavors did I get…

My wife Hoang and I each at half of each $3.50 (with tax) chocolate ball.

I also got the honey bread cake thing for six bucks. In Brazil, it’s Pão de Mel and it is a subtly spiced, moist honey cake with barely any honey flavor. They are typically filled with dulce de leche and covered in a layer of chocolate. And it was delicious. I loved it.

I’d bet the coffee here is very good and I’d hope whatever comes out of the cafe down the road is high quality as well. If the level of attention to detail carries over to the all of the other offerings at ChoccoDiva, maybe she’ll be moving over the higher rent district in the center of town soon enough.

(IF, that would even be something she’d want. Which it’s probably not. Which… good for the ChoccoDiva.)

ChoccoDiva (Instagram)
CTMQ’s Connecticut Chocolate Trail