Before Alessia Benavides sold her first bonbon at Chocolatl, she taught classes in a back-of-the-house kitchen.
She taught one group of students how to make conchas, a second how to bake sourdough bread.
Why teach?
To run a successful business in Stone Oak, Benavides had to sell more than chocolate. Rent is expensive. Utilities are costly. So she turned her kitchen into a classroom. And then she began selling chocolates — two weeks before Valentine’s Day.
“Just from the chocolates alone,” Benavides said, “we wouldn’t survive.”
Benavides is a rare chocolatier in San Antonio. She bakes and teaches out of the same shop, where 90-minute to 2-hour classes range from $32 for cookie decorating to $75 for sourdough bread making. She sells confections in house, at local markets and online.
Credentials?
A shelf across from the Chocolatl pastry case holds multiple awards. One is from the Texas Culinary Association, which named her Pastry Chef of the Year for 2024. Another is from CultureMap San Antonio, which named her Tastemaker’s Pastry Chef of the Year for 2025.
“Her gleaming bonbons must be seen in person to get the full effect,” CultureMap wrote.
The Tastemaker award prompted the following post on her Facebook page: “This achievement reflects not only my passion for pastry arts but also the hard work and dedication that goes into creating exquisite desserts,” Benavides wrote. “I am incredibly grateful for the support of my team, mentors, and everyone who has been part of my culinary journey.”
That journey began in Mexico, where Benavides learned to bake from her grandmother. She received formal training and a bachelor’s degree in culinary arts from Universidad Regiomontana in Monterrey. She moved to Texas in 2010 and earned a bakery and pastry certification from Le Cordon Bleu in Austin.
Benavides worked in a hotel restaurant before moving to San Antonio to teach at the Art Institute from 2012 until it closed in 2023. Her students learned well. She hired one of them, Giselle Ramos, as Chocolatl’s assistant pastry chef.
“She taught me almost everything about baking at the Art Institute,” Ramos said. “She taught me how to do everything pretty and make it saleable. And here (at Chocolatl), she taught me how to make bonbons, how to paint them, how to fill them and how to make the fillings. And she taught me how to make conchas.”
The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a pivot. As businesses shuttered, Benavides began to focus on the art of chocolate-making. To improve her craft, she earned chocolatier certification from the Melissa Coppel Chocolate and Confectionery School in Las Vegas.
From there, she crafted her own recipes, experimented with formulations and flavors and sold chocolates at pop-ups and farmers markets. In January, she opened Chocolatl.
Benavides uses Valrhona chocolate, a renowned French luxury manufacturer considered the Rolls Royce of chocolates, in her bonbons. The confections are created in a mold and decorated by hand. Though often consumed whole, they are not meant to be eaten that way.
“You’re supposed to bite into it so you can see the layers of the bonbons,” Benavides said. “Most of our bonbons have two or three layers. We have a blueberry pie that has four. There’s art on the outside and also on the inside.”
The four layers of the blueberry bonbon: blueberry pâte de fruit, marshmallow, lemon curd ganache and graham cracker crunch with freeze dried blueberries.
Chocolatl features more than 30 regular, seasonal and truffle flavors, from pistachio and peppermint to Mexican chocolate and guava cheesecake.
Benavides also sells artisan bars, dragées and an assortment of pastries, among them: Dubai chocolate chip cookies, Dubai conchas, Dubai brownies and fruit tarts.
For those with dietary restrictions, Benavides offers confections with sugar-free ingredients.
Working at Chocolatl, Ramos says, is more than sweet pleasure. It’s a form of therapy.
“I served 21 years in the Army,” she said. “I have PTSD. A doctor told me it would be good if I were to do therapy. For me, it’s very therapeutic to work here. I drive in from Marbach Road. It takes me 30 minutes to get here. But it’s worth the drive. I love it.”
