Theatre themed chocolates…

Happy Easter

My final post in what I am now calling the Chocolate Series, in preparation for the most chocolate-themed day of the year. I hope you are all having a wonderfully, chocolately weekend!

The Sweet Theatre

The beautiful packaging of The Sweet Theatre’s chocolate bars has awoken my inner theatre geek. Each flavour has it’s own’s Shakespeare leading lady that it represents, and this makes me very happy inside.

Although I only picked up my six favourite ladies, there are twelve characters (or flavours if you must) available in total. I can’t say that they are the greatest chocolate’s on the planet (Getting a bit cocky after that tasting!) but the few I’ve tried are really rather tasty indeed and Miranda and Lady Macbeth were both shortlisted for the Quality Food Awards 2014.

But let’s be honest – the quality of chocolate doesn’t matter, we only want them for the wrapper’s, and blooming great they are too! Find out more here. 

Chocolate Week Part 2: A Chocolate Tasting with Cocoa-Runners

The Tasting Zone

It was a little cautiously that we entered into The Tasting Zone at The Chocolate Festival not knowing quite what to expect. What we got however couldn’t have been a better experience. An hour of trying different bean-to-bar chocolate’s from chocolatiers across the world

The most useful thing I learnt was that the trick to finding a decent bar is to ask where the beans come from. If they don’t know, it’s made from Belgian Chocolate and that means bad. Belgian chocolate is bad. End of story. (I didn’t know that before either, but the guy had reasons and it all made a lot of sense at the time!)

Cocoa Runners

The tasting was led by Cocoa Runners, a company who offer a subscription box service for bean-to-bar chocolates. In the subscription you get four large bars of fancy chocolate each month, and it is all wrapped in incredible insta-worthy packaging.

They really seemed to know their stuff, and all the chocolate we sampled was delicious, so if luxury chocolate is your thing, and you fancy a present getting delivered every month, you can find out more here. 

(Please note I do not own the photo of the chocolate)

The Chocolate Festival

Easter

It’s nearly here. Four whole days to lie on the sofa, go for walks in the sunshine (hopefully) and eat so much chocolate, hot cross buns and lamb that you can barely move when it comes to getting up for work on Tuesday.

Having made a trip to the Cheese, Wine and Chocolate festival I now feel like an expert on the stuff…

The Festival

After treating ourselves to some champagne and lots of incredible cheese, we took a wander round the Chocolate Festival, that this year has hijacked some of the floor space of The Cheese and Wine Festival in the Business Centre in Islington.

Now, as cheese and chocolate are pretty much my two favourite things in life, I was having a pretty good day. Stall after stall of free samples of some of the best cheese and chocolate not just in the UK, but world over.

Added bonus was Lush Cosmetics were there showing off their collection of chocolate based beauty goodies, and offering chocolatey treatments to the festival punters. Some better know brands like Rococos chocolate’s and Paxton and Whitfield Cheese where there, but it was a fabulous place to discover some exciting new brands (particularly in chocolate) who – from what I learnt in my tasting are doing pretty groundbreaking things in the world of chocolate.

But there will be more on my fave brands, and tasting experience later…