Who needs basic food groups? Gimme chocolate.

Who needs basic food groups? Gimme chocolate

Basketballs are 33 cents each. Roses are $55 a dozen. How about a serving of peas and carrots?

One catch. They're all made out of candy. Unwarp the orange foil and the chocolate basketball inside is edible. The roses are colored chocolate and the vegetables are made of pure sugar.

Candy connoisseurs can find sugar-filled sweets of any shape and size in the Southland. One distributor carries 1,600 different varieties of cavity causers, while retailers in Beverly Hills make chocolate-rich table centerpieces for parties that will serve as dessert by the end of the night.

Your favorite car, be it a Jag or a 450SL, can be made out of chocolate, or if you're a sports buff, chew on a few chocolate tennis balls or soccer balls. And there's a full bar of liqueurs available for the lushes in town. How about a chocolate with apricot brandy in the center?

Candy-making was once a thriving business in the Southland, but that was not much after the turn of the century. Most of the Willie Wonkas have since gone elsewhere, leaving less than a dozen candy manufacturers in the region, according to Jim Myerson, president of Los Angeles-based Ben Myerson Co., which manufactures an array of candy.

There are only three confectionary factories left within the Los Angeles city limits, Myerson said, while the number of candy retailers fills about half a page in the local phone book. No one knows, though, just how big the Southern California candy market is.

Some artists shape clay. Some carve rock. Then there are those whose creativity is expressed by molding chocolate.

And, as in any art form, there are the tragedies (albeit small scale) - as in the case of the chocolate artist who will never know the full joy of her creations. Lee Gelfond, owner of Lee Gelfond Chocolate Inc. in Beverly Hills, says she's allergic to chocolate and has never eaten a bite of it in her 12 years of business.

Gelfond just finished molding 80 lifesize firemen's hats and policemen's hats for the Los Angeles Community Protectors luncheon that took place at the Sheraton Universal hotel in Universal City last month. Then there's the place settings for one company's board of directors meeting. The settings consist of baskets containing Hollywood clapboards, miniature models of California and movie projectors - all made of colored cocoa and sugar.

Sweet networking can get a little messy sometimes. Gelfond has made wallet-size chocolate business cards for the United Jewish Fund legal services division, Max Factor and Ernst & Young, the accounting firm.

Gelfond's kitchen looks like a cross between a paint store and a bakery. On one shelf are a dozen containers of colored chocolate - red, green, orange, pink - resembling paint. In another corner, several trays are lined up on a bakery cart. White chocolate books sit on one tray, a delicious-looking set of palm trees fills another, and a few rows of chocolate top hats turned upside down are sitting on another tray. The smell makes visitors wonder when Oompa Loompas are going to come bounding around the corner.

Some candy lovers want a choice. Try 17 kinds of Lindt Swiss chocolate bars, 16 kinds of candy canes or 35 types of licorice on for size at Bohemian Biscuit Co. in Culver City.

The company also carries 16 different varieties of Pez, those candies that come in a plastic tube with the head of a cartoon character on top. They sell for 67 cents each.

Then there's the over-21 section. With Bohemian Biscuit's selection of liqueurs, it could be debated what chocolate lovers would do first - gain 5 pounds or get tipsy. The company distributes rum cordials, cognac cordials, amaretto cordials and plum wine cordials.

For the romantic touch, try "Chocolat Fourre a la Liqueur." Not to mislead you, these are cordial-filled chocolates in the shape of a pear. The pears fill liquor bottles that sell for $13.95 each.

Not to your taste? Try "Chocolats Fourres Liqueur Prune."

The most expensive candy in Los Angeles that this reporter could find was "Valrhona" chocolate, made in France. It sells for $6.75 a pound, wholesale, and comes in 6.6-pound blocks. Van Rex Gourmet Foods Inc. in Culver City sells the costly chocolate to the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, Spago in West Hollywood and all of the Ritz Carlton hotels in Southern California.

Beverly Hills Candy & Confection Co. sells chocolate Oscars each year to agents whose clients have been nominated for Academy Awards. In 1990, the store sent 10 chocolate trophies to one agent who had that many clients nominated. "Not one of the people nominated got the award. I don't know if it was a jinx or what," said Bob Isenberg, manager of Beverly Hills Candy & Confection Co.

There are three candy manufacturers within the Los Angeles city limits: Ben Myerson Co., Adams & Brooks Inc. and See's Candy Shops Inc.

Ben Myerson Co. makes chocolate bars, peanut clusters and some specialty candy boxes, and it's licensed to manufacture Sunkist fruit gems.

Adams & Brooks in downtown Los Angeles makes P-Nuttle candy, taffy, lollipops, coffee candy and taffy, said Tempe Brooks, secretary and treasurer of the company.

The See's manufacturing plant in downtown Los Angeles, meanwhile, makes boxed chocolates such as "nuts and chews" and "assorted chocolates," said Greg Ward, director of process and development for See's.

There were 30 or 40 large candy manufacturers in Los Angeles during the 1910s and 1920s, but as freight-shipping went national, local plants found it hard to compete, Myerson said.

"All of us who manufacture candy compete with others for the taste of pleasure, the taste of sweetness," he said.

PHOTO : An affection for confection: Bohemian Biscuit's wide selection includes an over-21 section