artisan du chocolat

London is filled with specialist, small scale chocolate companies making brilliant products and another favourite of mine is Artisan du Chocolat. I was first drawn in by their concession at Selfridges which features molten chocolate being swirled in a posher version of a slush puppy dispenser. They also have gorgeous packaging and, so I'd heard, amazing salted caramel. I was more familiar with the attention to detaikl and craft they lavish on their bars - single original, flavoured enhanced by tea and mixed with spices all feature alongside some of their more creative products.

I'd never visited one of their stand alone stores and decided chocolate week, and therefore the temptation of free tastings and chocolate cocktails, was as good a time as any. At first I struggled to find their Westbourne Grove store and went on a rather roundabout route back and forth to Portobello road, but their it is, nestled on the Bayswater end of the street but still with some very pleasant neighbours.

The interior of the store is fantastic - modern and glossy shades of orange and white - one wall is reserved for the bars and another is a cabinet of their truffles and innovative chocolate discs. The store also has banquette style seating for tastings, cocktail consumption and gelato, and a tasting was in progress on my visit. Hence I didn't take any in store photos.

Whilst their salted caramel features in lots of recipes and is available as a sauce (and on tap maybe? please?) they don't have it combined in any of their bars so instead I made a beeline for the caramel honeycombs (£5.99) and seasalted caramels (£11.99), intending to take them home and indulge. I couldn't resist sampling one of the caramels on the tube home - it was divine. A fairly unassuming exterior with a bitter dark cocoa dusting gives way to a intense, rich caramel that's just the right side of salty. not too bitter and not too sweet; I could eat it forever. Choosing whether to suck or bite has an impact on the taste sensation, I prefer to prolong it.

I tried the original plain recipe, but they also have variations flavoured with banana, pink and black pepper and lemongrass.

The honeycomb was a kind of very posh crunchie - the chocolate coating it was rich and expensive tasting, just the way I like, and whilst the honeycomb itself wasn't a vast improvement on Cadburys, the subtle salted flavour added a dose of j'ne sais quoi.

I'm now heading to Chocolate Unwrapped tomorrow at Vinopolis, where the company's Zoe Burgess will be conducting tastings amongst other exciting events. The UK's premier chocolate companies will be in attendence, and I'm hope not to make myself feel sick!

One final word on Artisan du Chocolat - how can you not love a company who have the good humour to produce this? I have a feeling they might love the same trash TV as me!

chocolate week

Next week (11-18th october) is national Chocolate Week, so in honour of this occasion the only sensible thing to do is to consume as much high quality chocolate as one could manage. If you're more interested in organised chocolate eating rather than solo worship the 'Chocolate Unwrapped' event is next Saturday and Sunday at Vinopolis in Borough and exhibitors include previous LROC appearees such as Rococo and Melt. Although I'd love to go I may be visiting friends that weekend instead so in lieu of this I'm going to make a nuisance of myself in the respective chocolate halls of Selfridges and Liberty with comparitive reviews and sampling.

More info is on the Chocolate Week website

Cyprus part two

Here's some more images from the holiday...

fancy friday

The concept of fancy friday seems to have fallen by the wayside a little - although I am keen to get it back on board. It's great to be able to celebrate something beautiful on a regular basis.

This week food packaging gets the ff treatment - Lovely Package is a sort of website/blog which collates the best of packaging design ranging from agency commissions seen on supermarket shelves to student projects. To me packaging completes the experience - especially when it's in relation to anything sweet. Something thoughtfully designed and intuitively put together makes the sensation of comsumption so much more pleasureable - so feast your eyes thusly on the cream of the edible crop...

high street cakage: M&S cupcakes

Every now and then the urge for cake comes strong when you're in somewhere like, say, Liverpool Street Train Station and desperate as you might be to find some beautifully presented and artisanally baked confection the reality is that a hit of high street cake is necessary. Good old M&S comes to the rescue in the form of it's American style cupcakes (and the rest of the cake range is pretty good too - especially the fresh victoria sponge and the New York style cheesecake).

It just so happened to be the case that as I was passing through looking for wine and expensive pre-prepared food that the raspberry and white chocolate cupcakes were only a pound for two, so I knew it was time to give them a try and scoff them whilst catching up on missed episodes of Mad Men.

The cakes were moist as described, the frosting was tangy, but as with every cake purchased from the supermarket it felt and tasted a little too perfect - a fabulous bakin' boys deluxe if you will. For a pound I'm certainly not complaining but neither do they represent an exquisite and beautifully crafted treat. The icing was soft and the flavour was offset well by the dots of white chocolate and importantly it was plentiful - it wasn't too sweet and the base wasn't too vanilla-y (the way my baking always tastes, and pretty awful). I'd like to see some kind of additional levels of fun in side the cupcake itself - maybe some fruit or something moist to break up that great hunk of sponge and frosting.

Aoologies for the lack of any actual pictures - once the sun goes down my flat is so dark that anything seems to come out looking dreadful! I'm going to need to work on that.

Cyprus

The first lot of images from our recent sojourn in Cyprus - sea swimming, Troodos, Kolossi castle and street scenes in Phoini.

back

I'm back - I've been sunning myself in Cyprus for the past week. In truth I thought I'd accomplish a lot of great things alongside the sunbathing, drinking and swimming in crystal clear water but other than taking a lot of photographs I didn't do much.

To be honest, I'm not sure if I'd go back to Cyprus, there's too many British ex-pats and the beaches don't match the beauty of those in Sardinia. They also have no idea what a truly dry white wine tastes like!

On the plus side some bits of the Island are incredibly beautiful - one day we went on an off road expedition to the Akamas peninsula, the land rover took us up uneven roads on the ledge of perilously high mountains, we walked a gorge, saw wild goats and drove through a village so high in the Trodoos mountains that clouds blew across the road.

Still, whilst I'm glad to be back in some ways the weather has turned distinctly autumnal, and work looms large.

Once I've edited I'll share some pictures, and I have plenty planned for the next few weeks. For today, since we flew in over night, I'm snuggling down with Mr LROC and catching up on all the TV we've missed.

He has vowed to set up a somewhat less charming sounding blog called London Review of Toilets - I'm hoping it's not an indication of how he feels about this one!

In the meantime here's some Hipstamatic joy from Cyprus.