It’s been quite some time since we reviewed anything from Hotel Chocolat, but at the recent opening of the chain’s wonderful new “Roast + Conch” store and café in Covent Garden (where you can actually watch chocolate being made from the bean), we were give a goodie bag stuffed full to the brim of seasonal chocolate, these included.

At first I was intrigued by the box. It features a typically stylish Hotel Chocolat design, but the cellophane wrapping is actually underneath the lid rather than around the whole box. But the reason became clear when I removed the lid – the box also contains a little Valentine’s card that you can include when giving it as a gift, and this way you can write on the card without ever having to unseal the box. It’s clever little ideas like that that keep Hotel Chocolat ahead of the competition in terms of design.

Inside, you get twelve chocolate hearts, with two each (perfect for sharing) of six flavours including two dark and four milk chocolates. Each flavour is decorated with a different coloured pattern to distinguish it and while not the most expensive packaging in the world, the overall effect is very pleasing.

The flavours are Strawberry & Black Pepper, Raspberry Rapture, Smooth Praline, Soft Chilli Caramel, Vanilla Truffle and Chocolate Brownie.

The Vanilla truffle I tried first was sweet, with a soft and creamy filling. Too sweet for me, but I was pleasantly surprised by the texture.

The strawberry and pepper was equally soft, almost liquid, with a tangy fruitiness followed immediately by the flavour of black pepper, although there wasn’t much in the way of heat.

The Chocolate Brownie flavour is interesting, although I didn’t pick up much “brownieness” myself, and found it more like a sweet, slightly crunchy praline.

The Soft Chilli Caramels are the most liquid of the lot, with a sweet, buttery flavour followed by a fairly significant chilli kick. At first the sweetness and heat were a little too much for me, but I must have liked it as I found myself eating the other one straight after!

The Smooth Praline is exactly that. A simple hazelnut praline in milk chocolate. Sweet, smooth and nutty.

Finally, we have the Raspberry Rapture is a milk chocolate with an ultra smooth, tangy raspberry truffle filling. I love most fruit chocolates, particularly raspberry, so this would have to be my favourite of the bunch.

Overall, I’m impressed by this box. At £14, it represents great value, but the stylish appearance and interesting flavours mean but your loved one won’t think you’ve scrimped if you give it as a Valentine’s gift.

With a four month shelf life, they can’t really compare to the ultra fresh chocolates you would find at your local artisan chocolatier, but for those of us who don’t have access to such things – or simply can’t afford them – these are a great alternative.

Ingredients

To make these simple and delicious chocolate covered strawberries, you will need:

• 150g chocolate
• 250g large strawberries, washed, dried

Method

PT20M

Time for some more Valentine’s chocolates! Chococo sent us this 200g milk chocolate heart with freeze dried raspberry, meringue pieces. It measures a healthy 18cm across and comes wrapped in cellophane, tied with a simple red ribbon. It looks great, but it’s not easy to photograph, hence my heart being completely naked here.

The heart is decorated with white chocolate sploges and dark chocolate piping, and as you can see, the decoration is deliberately haphazard, with large areas of freeze dried raspberry showing through the chocolate in places.

Like most of Chococo’s products, the chocolate is sourced from the über-ethical Grenada Chocolate Company. If your sweetheart is into ethical and sustainable food production or simply supporting a small British chocolatier, then it’s definitely worth considering this as a Valentine’s gift.

It’s a healthy 44% cocoa solids, and it’s pretty tasty, so while I can’t guarantee that eating a 200g milk chocolate heart will be good for you, it will certainly make you feel good.

The raspberry and meringue give a lovely biscuity crunchy texture to the chocolate, and the random distribution of flavours means that every mouthful is slightly different. It’s very difficult to put down once you start eating it.

So while this doesn’t have the impact of zChocolat’s £100 box of Valentine’s chocolates or the amazing flavour combinations of Matcha’s Valentine’s Selection, it does have the quality and visual impact that would make a great gift for a real milk chocolate lover.

I’ll say it straight out. This is the prettiest chocolate box I’ve ever received. By far.

It’s also the first time I’ve ever been sent chocolates in a solid mahogany box. Finished with a gold heart and a brass clasp, and wrapped in a beautiful cloth bag, I don’t think you could hope to find a better example of stylish packaging.

Inside the amazing looking box is a gold lined lid and two simple card boxes containing the chocolates themselves. zChocolat have a wide range of options to choose from, but mine contains an assortment of 12 chocolate hearts on the top layer and 15 signature milk, white and dark chocolates on the bottom.

Looking at the website, there are a variety of customisation options available for the packaging, including an optional engraved brass plate, USB key and even a concierge delivery service. This is how to make a real impact on Valentine’s Day.

The chocolates are handmade in Aix-en-Provence in France by chocolatier Pascal Caffet and shipped worldwide by DHL. Mine arrived promptly and in perfect condition.

I’m not going to go into lengthy description of the individual chocolates, as frankly there’s too many. Included with the box is what amounts to a small, glossy paperback book with photos and descriptions of each of the chocolates in English, French and Spanish, along with a short biography of Pascal.

They’re made from 70% Venezuelan dark and 40% Ivory Coast milk chocolate, and helpfully the signature truffles (which all look the same) have numbers on them, so you can easily tell what’s what. As you’d expect with French chocolates, there’s lots of pralines and nuts along with some ganaches and a caramel.

There’s no really unusual or challenging flavour combinations, but each chocolate is very well made and very tasty.

So you’ve decided this would make an excellent Valentine’s gift and you’d like to know how much they cost, right? Well, this box of 27 chocolates will set you back a cool £100. That makes them one of the most expensive boxes of chocolates I’ve ever had. If you go for all the optional packaging and delivery extras, you can expect to pay closer to £150.

So this is not your average Valentine’s gift. For the average person, something like Matcha Chocolat’s selection is better value. But if your budget can handle it and you really want to make an impact, this selection will leave your loved one with a beautiful mahogany jewellery box that will forever remind them of how thoughtful (and rich) you are.

The last of the items from HS Chocolate Co. is from their collection of Candy Bars, which are designed to have an adult and gourmet theme. Rather than being a version of an existing bar, this one is its own composition. The Figgy Blue comes in wrapping similar to the kind on the filled chocolates, this time in a shade of blue just darker than that in the logo.

As with those, the chocolate here is of a refreshing degree of quality. Its deep, rich, and earthy aroma expresses itself right away. The bar is layered in a way not so unlike a Snickers bar, with a fluffy white nougat on the bottom, then walnuts, and then a fig ganache. Inside the nougat is the interesting ingredient Bayley Hazen Blue Cheese. Apart from the layering, all of these add up to something very different indeed from both a candy and an average chocolate. The taste from the cheese isn’t strong, but it is noticeable. Taken from fig preserves, the fig is also not the most frequently found flavor in chocolate. Enter the gourmet scene.

Imagine a fruit and cheese plate with a creamy dip, a few walnuts, and some thin slices of chocolate or fudge. Place all of those individual effects together into one 3 oz. chocolate bar and you have the Figgy Blue. It isn’t a bar to be eaten quickly, but one to take in slowly in order to give time and attention to the four elements. It took me a moment to get used to this bar; however, it has proved itself to me with the fresh, tasteful ingredients that I now associate with HS Chocolate. This one also shows that HS Chocolate is capable of doing more than just ordinary confections, maintaining a creativity that keeps the products exciting while still familiar.

Fudges is a Dorset based bakery that makes a wide range of sweet and savoury products. I particularly like the sound of their Marmite biscuits, but of course we can only talk chocolate here on Chocablog. So they sent us these florentines and flapjacks to try instead.

The flapjacks are simply made from oats, sugar syrup and butter and are half dipped (actually more like three quarters dipped) in dark chocolate of unspecified cocoa percentage or origin.

Leaving aside the fact that I don’t generally like eating chocolate when I have no idea where it’s come from, I do quite like the design. The one corner free from chocolate means you can easily hold it without getting melted chocolate all over your finger.

The texture is a little hard, and they are very sweet, but I happily made my way through the whole box over the course of a few days.

The florentines are equally sweet. Made from discs of dark chocolate covered with almonds, sugar syrup, ginger, sultanas and mixed peel, they do have a very nice flavour. First a hint of orange, then the warmth of the ginger. They’re chewy and quite moreish.

That said, I’m just not a big fan of this kind of thing – I usually prefer my chocolate to be in bars, truffles or even cakes, rather than biscuit form. The packaging just doesn’t quite do it for me either. While I’d be quite happy with savoury biscuits packaged in thin cardboard boxes with plastic inserts, it doesn’t scream high end chocolate.

But at just £2.29 and £3.25 a box, they’re not expensive, so probably worth trying if you’re looking for a change from your regular chocolate biscuit.

It’s been a while since we’ve reviewed any chocolate from Matcha Chocolat, so I was really looking forward to trying this new limited edition Valentine’s Selection.

The day after they were sent, they arrived in perfect condition at my door, and I wasn’t disappointed.

The box follows the same format as previous Matcha selection boxes, although this time the box of 16 contains two of eight different chocolates – in other words, it’s a great box for sharing with your partner.

The chocolates are:

Cardamom & Banana
Banana purée, cardamom and dark chocolate ganache in a dark chocolate shell.
Banana very often doesn’t work well with chocolate, but this ultra smooth puree is just perfect. The flavour is subtle and works perfectly with the spicy warmth of the cardamom. Fantastic.

Chestnut & Japanese Whisky
Single origin São Tomé chocolate blended with chestnut puree and Yamazaki 10 year single malt whisky and decorated with sesame seeds. This one has a very light texture and is packed with flavour. The whisky is strong without being overpoweringly alcoholic, and although the chestnut is more subtle, it does come through at the end.

Vietnamese Cinnamon
Madagascan dark chocolate with Vietnamese cinnamon. This one a Great Taste award last year and it’s easy to see why. A perfect flavour balance means you can taste all the fruity notes from the Madagascan chocolate whilst still getting a significant hit of cinnamon.

Matcha & Pistachio
White chocolate ganache with pistachio paste & matcha tea, dipped in dark chocolate and dusted with bright green sweetened matcha tea. Easily the most eye-catching of this selection, and also one of my favorites. The sweetened matcha dusting adds texture and flavour to this deliciously smooth pistachio chocolate.

House Dark Truffle
A simple dark chocolate truffle made with single origina cacao from São Tomé and dusted in cocoa powder. A simple, smooth and delicious truffle that’s packed with flavour. I could eat these all day.

Jasmine Pearls
Dark chocolate with jasmine green tea. This one won both Great Taste and Academy of Chocolate awards last year. I’m not a big fan of jasmine personally, but I know many people who simply love this chocolate, and I can see why it has won so many awards.

Ginger & Lemongrass
Madagascan dark chocolate with ginger and lemongrass. A gently warming flavour with a smooth texture. Once again, the natural flavour notes of the Madagascan come through. An impressive feat with a flavour as strong as ginger.

Yuzu
Another Madagascan dark chocolate, blended with yuzu puree in a dark chocolate shell with a textured floral pattern. A beautifully tangy, citrus ganache that melts in the mouth wonderfully.

There are some amazing flavour combinations in this stunning box of chocolates that look every bit as good as they taste. Matcha’s Katie Christoffers makes all her chocolates from her tiny kitchen by hand, yet somehow manages to produce a world class product. In my opinion, she’s one of the most talented chocolatiers in the UK and fully deserves the recognition of the awards she has received.

If you’re looking for the perfect Valentine’s gift for a real chocolate lover, then stop looking now. You’ve found it right here.

There’s something about M&M’s that seems to drive people a little crazy. Last year’s opening of M&M’s World London, the largest candy shop in the world, is evidence of that. Way too loud for me, but the kids seem to like it.

I can’t say that they’ve ever really been my thing, but they offered to send us some special personalised M&M’s to try, and who am I to refuse such a generous offer.

My M&M’s sell personalised M&M’s all year round, but with Valentine’s day just around the corner, I opted for this Valentine’s themed pack. There are a total of 13 colours to choose from, but I went for a very Valentinesy red and pink combination.

You can add two lines of text to personalise your M&M’s, and the text gets printed on to the actual shell.

Unfortunately, there’s no choice of flavours yet – all the different colours are the same milk chocolate M&M’s underneath. I know several people who have a thing for some of the more interesting M&M flavours like peanut butter or pretzel who may be a little disappointed by that. For most people though, I think just the fact that they can have M&M’s with their name on will be enough.

If you’ve ever had M&M’s before, you’ll know what they taste like. They’re sweet and creamy with a crispy shell. Too sweet for some (and the chocolate does contain added vegetable fats in addition to cocoa butter), but the kind of thing that once you start eating, it’s difficult to stop. A significant portion of my box is already gone. I think I might sprinkle the rest on ice cream to serve to friends for an awesome ‘branded’ dessert…

But really, this isn’t the kind of thing you buy for yourself. You buy them as a gift, or for an event like a wedding or a party (the My M&M’s website also sells in bulk for larger events.

Despite me not really being an M&M person, there is something quite cool about having your message written on chocolate, whether it’s an expression of love or your company name. I want more. In different colours. I wouldn’t eat them, of course – I’d just decorate my home with them…

This is the coffin it will be laid to rest in.

Yes, that’s Philadelphia cheese with Cadbury chocolate. In the same tub.

But it’s not the product itself that symbolises the final, inevitable death of Cadbury, it’s what it stands for. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Cadbury wasn’t just the nation’s best loved chocolate maker, it was a model for the manufacturing industry, providing the community with jobs, housing and recreation.

Today, it’s reduced to becoming little more than a logo to be plastered on other products made by Kraft, the multinational food conglomerate that bought the company just two years ago. This is the product we all joked would happen when Kraft first bid for Cadbury. And now it’s real.

“But wait!”, you may cry. “Chocolate flavoured cheese!? Cheese flavoured chocolate!? That’s innovative and exciting!”

Alas, this exciting new product launched which is officially launched on Monday seems to be little more than a repackaged and tweaked version of Philadelphia With Milka – something that’s been sold on the continent for a while. That product – little more than normal Philadelphia cheese with cocoa powder is almost exactly the same stuff as this with a slightly different label.

Now of course I can’t claim to be the biggest Cadbury fan in the world. In six years of writing about chocolate, my tastes have changed significantly and the UK fine chocolate industry has exploded. Couple that with Cadbury’s insistence on you using environmentally destructive palm oil in place of cocoa butter in their chocolate, and I’d rather get my chocolate fix elsewhere.

I’m told from those that have tried it that this product doesn’t actually taste that bad. But that’s not really the point. It just saddens me to see a great British institution reduced to being a sticker on someone else’s cheese spread – I wonder if anything in this product has been anywhere near a Cadbury factory.

It’s only a matter of time before we see Green & Black’s chocolate with Dairylea. Mark my words.

Those of you who have been following Chocablog for a while may remember that the original KitKat Chunky Peanut Butter got one of the worst reviews we’ve ever given on Chocablog.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, that original wasn’t around for very long, and now Nestlé have come up with a new range of ‘chunky’ KitKats – Orange, Double Choc, White, and Peanut Butter is back in a new form.

So let’s start with the peanut butter version. It’s a similar format with a thick layer of peanut butter on top of the wafer and generally seems to be an improvement on the original. It’s very, very sweet, but it does at least taste of peanut butter.

The orange version has a slightly different format, with more wafer and an orange flavour cream between the wafer layers. It’s not quite as sweet, and although the orange flavour doesn’t taste much like real oranges, I preferred it to the peanut butter version.

The double choc Kitkat is similar to the peanut butter version with the layer of peanut butter replaced with what the wrapper calls a “chocolate flavour topping”. I always try to avoid anything that calls itself “chocolate flavour” as generally means “not chocolate at all”. To me at tastes mainly of sugar and milk powder.

Finally, we have the white chocolate KitKat. This really is mainly sugar and milk powder, and it’s way too sweet for me. I managed a couple of bites, but this one definitely isn’t for me. Hardcore sugar addicts may like it, but there’s no actual chocolate flavour.

I think part of my issue with KitKat Chunky is the size. I can handle the sweetness in normal KitKat format where I can just break off a small finger, but with a single chunky finger, the sugar overwhelms everything else. It’s also worth noting that the milk chocolate contains added vegetable fat, so it isn’t something I’d recommend even if I actually liked it.