Baton Rouge Chemistry Teacher Turns Family Chocolate Habit Into Artisan Business Chocolate Bijoux

Maram Khalaf teaches chemistry at Woodlawn High School in Baton Rouge. Outside the classroom, she runs a handcrafted chocolate business with her mother, Aliaa Khalaf. It is called Chocolate Bijoux, and it makes jewel-like chocolates that customers can order in specific prints and flavors for special events.

The division of labor is simple. Maram, a Baton Rouge native and Louisiana State University alumna, handles the financial side. Aliaa is in charge of production. The shop offers 17 fillings, among them honeycomb crunch, pistachio mallow and cafe latte. The name came from a professor who remarked that the chocolates looked like jewels, or "bijoux" in French. The Khalafs kept it as a nod to the French culture of Louisiana.

The business began with Aliaa's taste for chocolate. Maram says her mother loves European chocolate and does not care for the American kind. The family has relatives overseas and traveled internationally often, and Aliaa would fill a handbag or carry-on with chocolate to build a stash. When COVID hit and travel stopped, the stash ran out, and the chocolate sold in local stores did not satisfy her. So mother and daughter began learning to make it themselves, using online instruction.

By the time classes resumed, Maram was a student at LSU, studying biology and education, with an Arabic minor, and doing marine biology research as an undergraduate. The house had plenty of chocolate, and she carried it to meetings and conferences. Professors told her she should start a business. She doubted that she could, since she says she had no idea how to run one. She started posting on Instagram and filling orders for friends and family. Word of mouth did the rest, and orders grew.

Her science training shaped the product. Because she was still enrolled, she says, her chemistry and biology lab work applied directly, and she chose food science courses and electives that related to the business. That gave her access to professors who work in food science for a living. She took the fillings to a lab and ran multiple experiments on them, checking shelf life, looking for crystallization and measuring how humidity affected them.

The design approach is deliberate too. Maram says most boxes of chocolate look alike, and she did not want to be locked into one look. The pair color-code their chocolates, which leaves room to vary the molds and patterns, such as marble, polka dot or ombre, as long as the main color stays consistent. She cites a liking for abstract art, and says her mother shares an appreciation for artsy things.

Her favorite work is event displays, because each one is different. Party favors such as a two-piece chocolate box are popular, but a display is three-dimensional and can take the form of a dome, a flower or a bouquet. She says it draws on an engineering and architectural side she rarely uses in daily life. Her mother focuses on what goes inside the chocolates. The Khalafs say all ingredients are fresh, top tier and made in house.

LSU, Maram says, was central to the business's reach. Her time across several colleges and departments opened doors, and she says it would not have succeeded without the university. The Manship School of Mass Communication reached out to the LSU Foundation, and both wanted the products.

Her relatives overseas are proud, she says; when she visited them this summer, it was all they talked about. Her parents did not grow up in the United States, while she and her brothers were born here. She says she likes showing diversity in the community, including by appearing in magazines, which she says is not often seen. With 17 fillings, event displays and a growing local base, the business appears set to keep building on the same word-of-mouth foundation.