I was sent a review box of brownies by the lovely Sharon from Devilishly Good Brownies.  She started making brownies and selling them at her sandwich shop and they got more and more popular. She started branching out and is now selling her brownies by mail order.

She has very professional boxes, all custom printed with purple and lovely colourful iridescent grass cushioning the brownies inside.  The experience of receiving these brownies is always going to be a special one. From the gorgeous branded box to the carefully wrapped brownies inside, the experience of just receiving them is special.  Add into that the fact that these brownies are fabulous on their own or heated up means that this is going to be a special gift for anyone.

The brownies are chocolaty and sweet with a dusting of powdered sugar to prevent them getting stuck together (I assume).  There is a double layer of chocolate brownie finger goodness in the box and lots of chocolaty goodness for those who enjoy a dense chocolaty sweet treat. There are chunks of white chocolate and the chocolate is very nicely flavourful.

These brownies are interesting to heat up. If you pop one or two in the microwave and heat them for 20 or 30 seconds, they get this warm gooeyness to them and with a cup of coffee they are absolutely fantastic. I can’t imagine something better besides eating them fresh out of the oven and even then brownies need time to settle to improve. So warm from the microwave or out of the box, these sweet brownies are going to be a treat to receive – just remember to buy a box for yourself.

You can buy these brownies at Sharon’s sandwich shop in Wales or go to her Devilishly Good Brownies website.

At William Curley they have a dessert bar which at the weekends is just £15.I had the opportunity to try it when I found myself in London on a Saturday morning. I was, in the end, defeated by the dessert though.

I started with buying myself a hot chocolate and I tried the new sea salt caramel. It was delicious and the hot chocolate was a delightful diversion.  After watching two women next to me experience the full glory of the dessert bar and the fresh baked madeleines, I had to try it myself.

As you can see, I started in even before I took a picture. Merlot ice, jasmine poached pear and chocolate. Woah – fruit, floral, delightful!

Then came the freshly made madeleines, rhubarb compote and custard with caramel and pistachios with hand-made ginger ice cream.  YUMMY!

Then I got the thing that finally defeated me – black forest dessert with pistachio ice cream. This was an ultimate chocolate dessert with delightfully dense and extreme chocolate flavour. Just too much so I had to take it home which was slightly difficult when I was visiting a friend.

To finish it off later that day, I had the petit fours. There’s a yummy chocolate macaron and some chocolates. You can pick the ones you want. I chose a raspberry and an earl grey tea. I liked the Earl Grey Tea one best

The girls next to me got tea as well but as I had already bought myself a hot chocolate there was no room for tea. I’m not sure if that is included in the price they paid or not so check when you order. All in all it was delicious and well worth making the trip for!

The final hot chocolate in the Galaxy range, this is the traditional hot chocolate made with water. No extras with this one, you can make a good old fashioned hot water hot chocolate. This is something I can dig – boiling the kettle and making a nice cuppa.

This instant hot chocolate from Galaxy is interesting and a little different. I think of all the instant powdered ones, I like the frothy one best. This one, while simple to make, has a slightly different flavour. There is a bit of a powdered milk flavour in the hot chocolate and this, for me, is not as nice as the frothy hot chocolate but still a nice hot cup of hot chocolate.

I did try adding some marshmallows to this – well, one. I chopped it up so it was smaller and popped it in and this is where this hot chocolate was brilliant.  With the way the powder mixed well with the hot water it meant mixing the marshmallows in made it even better.

I think that if you like Galaxy chocolate, you might want to go for the frothy top or even getter, one of those ones that has the thick hot chocolate in it and zap it in the microwave. But if you want a hot chocolate you can add things to like coffee, mint leaves, marshmallows, chillies, etc. then this is the one for you.  I‘ve already had half the jar

It’s a lovely day to win no matter what the weather and before the week has ended we’ll be giving away this lovely gift of a pair of mugs and Galaxy Frothy Top Hot Chocolate. You may remember that I reviewed this fun hot chocolate a little earlier and found it to be not at all shabby but not as rich as those ones you zap (well, duh!). I kept this one for myself and did not share with the office – that tells a story all its own (mine…)

Now you have the chance to win not only come yummy hot chocolate but the perfect mugs to go with it! Not only are these mugs absolutely brilliant, they are perfect to hold without burning your fingers thanks to the two finger grips (yes, I know it is a heart but they are also finger grips!).

To win this lovely prize shipped directly to your door so you can enjoy the deliciousness of a hot chocolate from Galaxy, I just need to know…

What would your ultimate hot chocolate break be? In a chalet in front of a fire, with friends chatting on the weekend, after work… what would your ultimate hot chocolate break be? This is a luxurious hot chocolate so I’m sure it will inspire some luxurious ideas.

Leave your comment here or on this post on our Facebook page and we’ll select one winner of this fab prize.

Good luck everyone and here are those ever important rules – I want real people to win and not automated comp entry engines. Thanks to Loquax for providing help to those of us wanting to create fair ways to give stuff away.
1.One entry will be chosen at random from facebook and one entry will be chosen from blog comments that qualify.
2.The competition will run from Wednesday 14th of March 2012 to 1pm GMT Friday 14th March 2012.
3.The selection of winner will be made by the competition organiser using both entry lists and random.org alone and will not be swayed by undue influence.
4.One entry per person to this competition.
5.No cash alternative available.
6.I also reserve the right to exclude entries that I feel are inappropriate or not in the spirit of the competition.
7.Your details won’t be passed onto anyone else, unless you’re the winner and then I’ll send it to Galaxy so they can send you your prize.
8.I reserve the right to remove entries that I believe aren’t human created or are an attempt to gain an unfair advantage such as automated entries.

It was a rather chilly Saturday when I happened upon the lovely Churreria Espanola between Artisan du Chocolat and Paddington (before I gave up walking and decided to take the bus that is). This charming cafe is situated slightly off the high street and is a popular spot, known far and wide for its churros…. or at least along the street.

I popped in at just after the lunch hour rush and so was able to get a seat for a few minutes. The churros are sold individually. You buy the chocolate and you pay individually for the churros and my goodness are they yummy!

These are like deep fried long doughnuts with cinnamon sugar (you can get them without sugar) and you can just eat them on their own but when you combine them with the slightly bitter, deeply chocolaty, very thick chocolate it makes the untimate snack. This took me right back to Madrid and the first churros I ever tried.

These churros are fantastic. The doughnut part is crisp and warm and perfectly prepared. They are great with or without the chocolate. I could just relax and eat them and read a boox, enjoying a relaxing day. So wonderful. Add the hot chocolate to the mix and whether you eat it with a spoon or with a churros it doesn’t matter – it is thick, not to sweet and just perfect.

I don’t know whether I’d make another trip back for them again as I’m wheat intolerant and I’m not completely convinced it is worth the trip into the middle of nowhere (for me) just for delicious, yummy doughnuts and chocolate but maybe I’ll get back there more often than I get to Madrid

I fell in love with the packaging and the small squares just as soon as I saw them. I know from experience that chocolate lingers n my household and having small, individual squares to indulge in is perfect for my handbag and would have prevented many a destruction of aid handbags. The perfect packaging is not the only reason to fall in love with this chocolate though.

This chocolate is made by Rasmus Bojesen, an award-winning chef. He travelled to Bolivia and met Marcela Baldivieso and David Vacaflores at the Danish Embassy which is how this delicious chocolate started life. Unlike some few others betting their Alto Beni chocolate from the extremely high quality Felchlin range, Bojesen is making their chocolate direct from bean to bar.

According to the beautiful pamphlet, the bans are criollo beans which have been growing wild and native to the region for quite some time. There is no selective culling and no grafting – these beans are harvested by the adults while their children receive an education and then floated down river to be scooped out and fermented for only three days before being dried on cowhide in the blazing sun. Such an auspicious beginning has created a delicious chocolate.

This chocolate is extremely special. Depending on what time of day you try it, you get a different set of subtle flavours. In the morning the distinct chocolate flavour is enhanced by a hint of fruit whereas in the early afternoon I seem to get unroasted hazelnuts. These, however are background subtleties which only serve to help create a deliciously complex chocolaty flavour. Where some beans with this distinct chocolate flavour fall flat and have a single note of flavour and nothing else, the Oialla has a delightful complex flavour the while still distinctly chocolaty, has other flavours rounding it out and giving us something slightly more.

The mouth feel of this bar is slightly gritty with a particle size that to my sensitive mouth is slightly larger than something with a longer conch time however that does not detract from the pleasure you get when you allow a square – or half a square – to melt in your mouth. The finish is a lingering one, meaning you still get that chocolaty flavour coming through on you palette long after the chocolate has melted.

While on the more expensive side, this chocolate goes beyond Fairtrade to be extremely ethical and is well worth spending the money on for beauty, rarity and the chocolate itself.

I was invited to the Chocolate Philadelphia launch to try the blend of Cadbury chocolate with Philadelphia cream cheese.  Yes… cheese and chocolate. Together. In one product.

Ahem…

So in the interest in testing and chocolate reviewing I tried it.  Yes… I also ate that stilton cheese on the chocolate at the Hotel Chocolat opening.

One might ask – who exactly tried this bizarre chocolate and cheese combination? Once the initial concept had been developed, the product underwent rigorous consumer testing by over 1,500 Brits who were particularly enthusiastic about the chocolate taste, light texture and lower calorie content.  Philadelphia with Cadbury, was seen by respondents as a perfect spread for bread, toast, bagels, biscuits, and even as a dip with fruit – said the bods at Cadbury.

Ah but many chocolate companies who mass manufacture chocolate remove the cocoa butter and add palm oil which contributes to deforestation, you cry! I actually asked the folk at Kraft and they said “Yes we use a small amount of palm oil in our chocolate.  We share concerns about deforestation, that’s why we work with Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).  We believe in the need to develop & enforce standards for sustainable palm oil production and that’s why we buy GreenPalm certificates to cover all the palm oil we use for Cadbury products”

So… does this mean they take a bar of Dairy Milk and add it to Philly? The product contains cocoa powder as well as Cadbury chocolate to deliver the delicious chocolatey taste. At their Philadelphia factory, they blend Light Philadelphia with the Cadbury milk chocolate and cocoa powder to produce Philadelphia with Cadbury. Philadelphia is made with Cadbury milk chocolate. They say “Cadbury Dairy Milk is too thick, and not the correct consistency for this product, so similarly to some of our other formats such as some other bars (Crunchie, Curly Wurly, Double decker, Turkish delight, Picnic etc), we use Cadbury milk chocolate.”

Well, you might think, it looks like the company that was once a pioneer of British manufacturing has been reduced to being little more than a logo on someone else’s pack of cheese – is that the case?

The bods at Kraft said “We are very proud of the Cadbury brand, and have shown through significant and ongoing investment that we work hard to maintain the iconic status of the nation’s favourite chocolate brand.”

But what about this choccy Philly then, you ask – what is it like? Sour… like cream cheese and chocolate spread all in one. It isn’t too sweet and it is very chocolaty but you never escape the fact that it is cream cheese with a chocolate flavour. I’ve got mixed feelings. At under 100 calories for 30g, adding it to a rice cracker isn’t half bad for a snack but that sour taste I’m left with isn’t my favourite feeling. The spread isn’t terrible and has a nice enough flavour and I think on a digestive will be just like chocolate cheesecake so it’s a nice indulgence but I think I’d rather have Pierre Marcolini chocolate spread or Askinosie spread but I’m a bit of a chocolate snob.

Right – this is it folks. We are at the day before Valentine’s Day and you NEED to make sure you have some chocolate and flowers and jewellery and cards or some combination of the aforementioned traditional Valentines treats.  Now, most of what I have covered off is actually already unavailable but the popular high-street names of Godiva and Thorntons.

Thorntons is very popular as a high street chocolate brand. Even as the years have gone by, the popularity of Thorntons seems undaunted. The competitions I have run with Thorntons chocolate have always been the most popular. So it is unsurprising that Thorntons have come out with what will probably be some of the most popular chocolates for Valentine’s Day.  And you still have time to rush down to a Thorntons right now and pick some up. Just go and find some and you’ll find these ADORABLE little boxes of love.

These three small boxes are just perfect with three chocolates each inside. Get one of each for a perfect suite of cute chocolaty numminess. The three options I got were the classic champagne truffle, the strawberry and champagne truffle and the continental viennese truffle.  These were all traditional Thorntons flavours (slightly sweet but still lovely) and because they are Thorntons you know what to expect flavour-wise.  You also know you can trust Thorntons and that most shops will have all three of these boxes today (and likely tomorrow too) so that you can grab three last minute miniatures with that bunch of non-roses. It’ll sex up any bunch of flowers and since it is a variety you can make a little basket out of them by adding something she loves or a bit of jewellery in a small gift bag or open basket.

There is also the option of spelling out how much your love means to you with one of their boxes of message truffles.  Not only will your love had a very special card with your personal message, it’ll be shaped like lots of little chocolates The message chocolates are wonderfully delightful and while they are all the same flavour, who cares? What is going to matter is that you cared enough to spell out a special message of love to the one you love. Mine were sweet but still nummy.

Godiva has long been looked to as a more posh version of the high street chocolate. Godiva are constantly innovating and coming up with new types of chocolates in new styles and new flavours and they’ve come up with these new Mont D’amour flavours that are available either in a cool clear plastic branded sleeve or in this cute little box and they are nummy! They are slightly sweet but I tried the ones I was sent with coffee and WOW. I certainly appreciated the fact the shells were not too think! The Cassis Marron was way better than I expected as it includes chestnut and yet it was delightful with the cassis. The Green Tea was actually a bit sweet but I think someone just trying out a green tea chocolate will find it strongly flavoured and so perhaps more flavourful and less challenging. The Fraises des bois was sharp and tangy and the real gold made it a super winner. The Fraise was delicious and *extremely* strawberry to the point I swear I got seeds stuck in my teeth – WOW! And the noisette citron was fun and really different for a lemon mousse. So you know this is going to be both appreciated because it is Godiva and delicious because they have done some great things with these chocolates.

So hurry – take your lunch hour as a rush trip to your local Thorntons or Godiva and grab some of these chocolates and make a splash tomorrow!

I was sent one of these individually wrapped brownies by the lovely woman behind the Just Brownies name. Working in batches, she creates some unique and crazy flavours in her brownies, setting her apart from more traditional brownie makers. Using local Sussex laid eggs & self raising flour (among other things) her brownies are then individually wrapped in plastic for onward delivery.

When I was contacted, I was offered any brownies I wanted. Wanting to choose just one and wanting a representative sample, I opted for the original plain chocolate brownie.

This brownie arrived looking more like a cake bar than a brownie. The long, thick chocolaty brownie almost had a typical crust on top and as you can see there is some aeration in the brownie with some bubbles breaking the surface.

The flavour is very nice but is closer to a dense cake than a brownie which I know is going to be great news to some readers who don’t like my preference for fudgy brownies The brownie is moist with lots of chocolate flavour and the aeration in the body helps give it a slightly lighter body & less dense makeup.

If you prefer your brownies more cake-like than fudgy then I recommend Just Brownies. This was an edge piece so was likely slightly dryer & more cooked but given the aeration of the brownie I’d gamble that they are mostly lighter & cakier and that is going to be a winner for a lot of people.

I’ve finally figured this all out.  I’ve wondered for awhile at the insanity of the while 24 thing with these advent things and I’ve finally sussed it I figure – this is not a one chocolate a day thing – this is an all-in-one-day thing.

Think about it – a month has a variable number of days but generally more than 24 but a single day – well… a single day has TWENTY FOUR HOURS and if we take a look at all these Hotel Chocolat advent calendars they have… wait for it… TWENTY FOUR CHOCOLATES.  Well, I’m thinking I’ve been doing it wrong – we’ve all been doing it wrong. This isn’t some chocolate torture device – this is a mechanism to help us measure the passage of time.

Think about your weekends – your Friday nights – think about your days – the time you spend just doing stuff – this is a way to help you get through every day and it marks off the hours for you. You get CHOCOLATE just for making it through the 24 hours in a day.  It’s like every hour you make it through rewards you with yet another piece of chocolate – yummy. So I thought I’d run through a typical 24h period.

1am – been drinking so deserve some chocolate would do well – it says “let’s begin” so I think more drinking
2am – moar chocolate – this time it’s a dark chocolate “I love Christmas” Well, I do more now!
3am – penguin penguin, DRINK penguin…. no way will I be awake for much longer so I eat an angel, tree, and “have you been good” slab
7am – been awake since 6:45 so now achieve Christmas bauble chocolate!
8am – ouch… ouch… pain and the penguin is hiding his face in disgust at my state… uuurrrrggghhh
9am – snowman says need more nurophen
10am – Christmas turkey dinner shaped chocolate and I’m hungry again…
11am – another Christmas bauble – wondering if I should eat ahead and so scoff tree & present
2pm – chocolate saying “10 days to go” but surely means 10 hours to midnight…
3pm – “cool Yule” chocolate but I don’t feel so cool
4pm – try to hold mistletoe over husband’s head and he eats it so ate bell & “let it snow” in revolt
7pm – “5 days to go” not really… more like 5 chocolates to go!
8pm – “almost there” it’s already beer o’clock though!
9pm – another turkey dinner but it’s left me *starving* so I eat the bell and snowman and give hubby the “it’s Chistmas eve” chocolate even though it isn’t…

OK so I didn’t make it through a full 24 hours but as you can see, clearly these boxes of chocolate are to help you get through a day but for those poor souls who think this is a one a DAY chocolate treat, you have to grab them fast from your local Hotel Chocolat or buy them online.