CHOCOLATE WEEK
www.chocolateweek.co.uk
Chocolate Week (14-20th October) is a fantastic week that celebrates the work of top chocolatiers and chocolate companies with events held across the UK. Attracting chocolate makers, producers, retailers and artisans from across the world, the week is showcased online by an excellent website, which lists all participants and events taking place while offering recipes and information about chocolate to make the chocolate-lover’s heart sing.
ROCOCO CHOCOLATES
www.rococochocolates.com
This year, Chantal Coady celebrates 30 years of Rococo Chocolates. A pioneer in the chocolate revolution that has now taken over Britain, Rococo combines warm, inviting shops, delicately nuanced flavours and beautiful packaging to offer a truly magical experience to all chocolate lovers. The site is classic and stylish and a fantastic online window in the world of this fabulous chocolatier. Here’s to another 30 years!
L’ARTISAN DU CHOCOLAT
www.artisanduchocolat.com
If you can’t pay a visit to its shop in Lower Sloane Street, you could do worse than taking a nosy round the website of L’Artisan du Chocolate. Here you’ll find the Couture Collection, in which exotic flavours such as banana and thyme, black cardamom and even tobacco are infused into elegant chocolate ganaches. A best seller comes with the liquid salted caramels. Then there’s rich drinking chocolate, solid bars and hampers of chocolate; in short, a veritable treasure trove of sophisticated chocolate delights.
MELT CHOCOLATES
www.meltchocolates.com
Since it burst onto the scene in 2006, Melt Chocolates has made its mark as a real mover and shaker on the chocolate making scene. With a boutique in Notting Hill, Melt also offers an excellent web presence that makes it as easy and fun to choose chocolate online as it is in the flesh. We particularly like the drag and drop feature in the ‘Pick Your Own’ section, which allows to you drag your favourite chocolates onto a board, before proceeding to checkout. And the chocolates themselves are sublime.
CHOCOLATE LADIES
www.chocolateladies.co.uk
This writer can personally vouch for the extraordinary quality of the brownies sold by this relatively new company, The Chocolate Ladies, whose gooey, melt-in-the-mouth brownies contain a minimum 70% cocoa chocolate and free range eggs. Order online from a range of flavours for weddings, birthdays, Christenings, dinner parties, or for no particular reason at all.
14 October 2013
Emily Jenkinson