Here she’s holding a tea party for her little sister. Chantal thinks she’s about 3 in this photo, which was taken either in Borneo or Ethiopia. The thing she remembers most is the table with the wonderful 1960s patterned tiles (you can see them peeking out here).

Perhaps it was even an early inspiration for the tiles in our MaRococo garden?

With warm weather just around the corner, we will make a variety of chilled chocolate creations including frozen banana pops, chocolate milk shakes and other sweet treats!

Children will take home all of their creations along with recipes to recreate at home (parental guidance recommended!)

Friday 31st May from 11.30am-12.30pm, £25 per child

Book online or contact Julie on 020 7245 0993 or events@rococochocolates.com for more information.

Flavours incude grapefruit & Campari, roasted peach, rose & pistachio and creamy pear & ginger. You’ll normally find Cesar at the Slow Food Market on the Southbank at the weekends, but check the Twitter feed to see what else they’re up to.

Flashback Friday is part of our 30th birthday celebrations, where we dig through Chantal’s archive of photos each week. Enjoy!

Here she is below unpacking the nucleus (a complete set of workers and drones plus queen, with thanks to The Co-Operative’s Plan Bee Campaign) in 2010.
Last year’s cold, wet summer followed by a harsh winter has severely impacted both honey production and the UK’s bee population, and unfortunately our hive was one of many that didn’t make it through the winter.

Queen bees lay eggs that will hatch as drones if unfertilised, but their eggs need to be fertilised to create worker bees. They can’t fly properly in rain and so need still, warm summer days to occur at the right time in order to mate, and if anything interferes with this the whole hive is in jeopardy.  Chantal suspects that our queen wasn’t able to mate, leaving the hive without enough essential workers to make it through the winter.

Chantal left all the honey in the hive to try to give the bees enough food to last until winter, but it’s now been removed and  put into jars with the help of Bee Collective, and we’re preparing to sell the honey to raise enough money to buy a new nucleus of bees. We have our names on a list to get bees from Yorkshire, and are hoping to have two or three in total by the end of summer.

We’ll keep you posted on progress, but leave us a comment if you have any honey or bee-keeping questions.

All four chocolates in the box won gold at the Academy of Chocolate Awards 2013, and we heard last week that three of them, including this chocolate, have also won silver awards at the European Semi-Final of the International Chocolate Awards!

The cocoa pod-shaped shell of this chocolate is made with a 60% dark Valrhona blend, decorated with silver and green cocoa butter flecks inspired by the silvery-green colours of the rosemary. The caramel is runny with a gorgeous silky texture, and the flavour bursts in the mouth as you bite in. The herbal depth of  rosemary comes through first, closely followed by the intensity of sharp-sweet passion fruit, that fills your mouth and lingers after the chocolate is gone.

If you haven’t tried herbs in chocolate before, this may well be the one that changes your mind!

The simple answer is that some people don’t count white chocolate as ‘real’ chocolate because it contains no cocoa solids.

However, James (our MD) and Chantal agree that, while white chocolate is different from dark and milk chocolate and lacks the rich depth and complexity that the cocoa solids create in chocolate, there’s a certain amount of unmerited snobbery about the issue. Cocoa (or cacao) seeds are made up of around 50% cocoa butter, so while white chocolate contains a high proportion of milk and sugar, a significant proportion of a good white chocolate bar is still derived from the cocoa bean.

Like mass-produced milk and dark chocolate, mass-produced white chocolate has traditionally contained additives that should never be seen in good chocolate and has had a very small percentage of cocoa-derived ingredients. Good white chocolate is as different from that as a low-cocoa commercial chocolate bar is from good chocolate.

‘It’s a delicious thing that people love,’ says Chantal. ‘It’s melting and wonderful in the mouth, so it gives that lovely chocolatey feeling. I wouldn’t choose to eat a whole block of white chocolate, but it’s an amazing backdrop for subtle and sophisticated flavours like saffron, pistachio and cardamom. One of my absolute favourite recipes is fennel with a white chocolate and citrus sauce, and one of our classic tasting combinations is Tokaj wine paired with cardamom white chocolate.’

Our cardamom white chocolate (pictured above) has just won the gold award for best flavoured white chocolate at the European Semi-Finals of the International Chocolate Awards, and we think the fact that white chocolate is included in awards like these is an encouraging sign.

We hope that helps, Hannah.

Do you have a question you’d like Chantal to answer? Post it in the comments and we’ll ask her.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? We asked Barry to tell us more.

He says:

I was inspired by everyone’s love of salted caramel but wanted to change it and do something different. I wanted to make a chocolate with incredible textures, so I made the caramel more toffee-ish and added a lovely crunch.

The bottom layer of this chocolate is a praline made with very small shards of almond and hazelnut for maximum caramelisation. It’s surprisingly light to eat and is a gorgeous crunchy complement to the smooth toffee on top, which is sweet and warming like the best toffees from your childhood. The toffee contains Grenada chocolate to balance the sweetness, making it dark and rich, and it’s this taste that lingers in the mouth. We cover the whole thing in a thin layer of 60% dark Valrhona chocolate then decorate it very simply with a fork mark and a sprinkle of sea salt.

Definitely one for retro sweet-lovers.

We normally only sell these chocolates in our London and Chester shops, but to celebrate the awards we have a limited number of gift boxes that we’re selling online at 20% off the retail price. Get yours here.

As part of our 30th birthday celebrations, we’re digging through Chantal’s archive of photos each week for the stories behind Rococo Chocolates. We hope you enjoy them!

The organisers aim to highlight the work of chocolatiers and chocolate makers internationally and in their own countries, reaching out to local food communities and helping to build public recognition and understanding of the fine chocolate industry. If you’re interested in finding out more about the awards, take a look at their website and at Cat’s account of the judging process on Chocolate Couverture.

Semi-Final judging takes place in a number of regions around the world, with World Finals taking place in London during October’s Chocolate Week. We were entered into the European Semi-Final, and are delighted to have won two gold awards (only one entry in each category at the International Chocolate Awards is given a gold) and three silvers. Our winning entries are:
 
Bars – Flavoured white chocolate

GOLD: Rococo Chocolates Organic White Chocolate & Cardamom Artisan Bar

Dark – nut based pralines and gianduja, enrobed whole nuts

GOLD: Rococo Chocolates Salted Chocolate Toffee & Crunchy Praline

Bars – Flavoured milk chocolate

SILVER: Rococo Chocolates Organic Milk Chocolate Artisan Bar with Salted Caramelised Almonds and Rosemary

Dark – Caramels

SILVER: Rococo Chocolates Kalamansi Lime Caramel
SILVER: Rococo Chocolates Passion Fruit and Rosemary Caramel

If you’re a Rococo fan you might have spotted a new Artisan bar flavour in that list. This bar will launch soon (keep your eyes on the blog for an announcement)  and is based on our best-selling sea salt milk chocolate bar with shards of crunchy caramelised almonds and subtle notes of rosemary. We can’t wait to let people try this one.

The two caramels and toffee praline also won gold awards at the Academy of Chocolate Awards earlier in spring, and the four award-winners are available online in a gift box with 20% off for a limited time!

Today we’re taking a closer look at the Kalamansi Lime Caramel. The shell is 60% dark Valrhona chocolate shaped like a cocoa pod, flecked with green cocoa butter to reflect the flavour inside.

For this chocolate we use juice from green Kalamansi limes, which originated in the Philippines. They resemble very small round limes, with the skin turning to orange when fully ripe, and are unusual in the citrus world for having sweet, edible rind. The tree is a cross between a type of mandarin and a type of kumquat, and people often describe the fruit as tasting like a cross between a lemon or lime and a mandarin.

Bite through the shell into the semi-soft caramel, and you’ll get a bright, light rush of mouth-filling flavour. The Kalamansi is zingy and refreshing, a flavour that’s at once familiar and strange. It has the complexity of marmalade with the sweetness of mandarin and the sharpness of lime, which all combines with the sweetness of the caramel to make an incredibly moreish chocolate with a strong fruity aftertaste.

Have you ever had a glass of ice-cold sweetened lime juice on a steaming hot day in Asia? The Kalamansi caramel is that experience wrapped up in chocolate. Yum.

The gift box includes:

• Salted Chocolate Toffee & Crunchy Praline – Gold winner, Best Filled Chocolate (Nuts)
• Kalamansi Lime Caramel – Gold winner, Best Filled Chocolate (Caramel)
• Passion Fruit & Rosemary Caramel – Gold winner, Best Filled Chocolate (Caramel)
• Madagascar House Truffle – Gold winner, Best Unflavoured Dark Truffle

Let us know what you think of them!

It held all sorts of treasures from Rococo’s past, including many of Chantal’s old photos, and once we’d seen them we couldn’t resist sharing some.

We’re starting right at the beginning, and Chantal is just 6 weeks old in this picture. At that age babies aren’t can’t do much, but apparently Chantal was constantly wriggling and attempting to move by herself. There’s a note on the back of this snapshot written by Sibyl, Chantal’s mother, who thought this early attempt to crawl was an early sign of determination.

It looks like she was right!

‘Surely when you seduced me, Chantal,’ he said.

Chantal laughed, agreeing that giving James a tutored chocolate tasting that ended up with her marrying him had to be the best memory. ‘It was all very innocent though!’ she says.

Got a question for Chantal? Reply here and we’ll ask her!

Join us in celebrating our success at the 2013 Academy of Chocolate awards.

Enjoy an evening’s tasting of our four stunning Gold Medal winning Fresh Ganaches along with our other delicious Medal winning Chocolates.

Fresh Ganache winners include Madagascar House Truffle, Kalamansi Lime Caramel, Passion Fruit & Rosemary Caramel and Salted Chocolate Toffee & Crunchy Praline.

We will be toasting our champion chocolates with a glass of fizz on Thursday16th May at 6pm in the shop.

Tickets to this special tasting are just £15. Contact the Chester shop on 01244895610 or chester@rococochocolates.com for more information.

If you’re interested in patisserie it should be a great day, with the competition open to professionals and chefs, and Claire Clark (MBE, MOGB, Master Patissier) as the head judge.

Demonstrations:

• Paul A Young, founder of Paul A Young at 1o:30
• Barry Johnson, principal chocolatier at Rococo Chocolates at 11:45
• Benoit Blin, executive pastry chef at Manoir aux Quat’Saisons at 13:00
• William Curley, founder of William Curley at 14:30.

The event will be held at Westminster Kingsway College, 76 Vincent Square, London SW1P 2PD on Saturday 27th April 10am – 5pm

The award ceremony last night was a great chance to catch up with and celebrate our fellow chocolatiers. The awards were given out after champagne and canapés, and the ceremony was followed by a tasting of many of the award winners. It’s a hard life, isn’t it?

We’ve said before how exciting it is to be part of the UK’s developing chocolate scene, and every year the standard of entries for the awards gets higher. Barry’s favourite chocolates last night were a honeyed, hand-blended chai chocolate from Boutique Aromatique that had an incredible texture, and Cowarth Park Hotel’s Spekuloos, Orange and Tonka that had a lovely crispy texture from the biscuits and a beautiful blend of flavours.

We’d also like to send congratulations to the winners of this year’s special award winners, who included Paul A Young, William Curley and Angus Thirlwell.

Work is well underway, and Mott from GCC sent us these photos of the crossing and the bridge itself.

Mott says: We are welding together the steel frame of the bridge on the ground, almost finished with that. Next week a crane will put the whole structure in place over the river and then they cast the concrete walk-way.

Here you can see the steel frame and the concrete footing of the bridge. We can’t wait to see it all in place!

Have you ever wondered how to temper chocolate like a professional or how to make the perfect truffle?

Come to our master classes to learn from Rococo Chocolates’ principal chocolatier, Barry Johnson.  Class size is limited to four students, to allow for individual instruction from Barry.

Tempering Chocolate

Saturday 18th May 10am-1pm

This course will teach you the fundamentals of the production of chocolate, working with chocolate and how to appreciate good chocolate. The course covers chocolate tempering, making solid chocolate figurines, decorations and tips for recreating the idea’s at home!

The Perfect Truffle

Saturday 18th May 2.30-5.30pm

The natural progression from our Tempering Chocolate class, this next step elaborates on how to make a chocolate truffle. Find out which ingredients work best and by the end of the course you will have your own selection of hand-made chocolate truffles to take home!

Along with your instruction from Barry, both courses include a guided chocolate tasting. You will also receive a goody bag filled with everything made during the course along with some Valrhona Chocolate(to practice at home) and a set of Rococo Recipe Cards.

For more information contact Julie on 020 7245 0993 or events@rococochocolates.com

We are really excited about the great events we have coming up at Rococo Chocolates. Don’t miss out on all of the chocolaty fun, book your workshop today.

Chocolate Canapes and Bubbly in the MaRococo Garden

Thursday 9th May 6.45-8.15pm

Come to this workshop to learn about delicious chocolate canapés. We will make a selection of savoury chocolate canapés including goat’s cheese ganache & chocolate olive tapenade.  After your hard work in the kitchen, you deserve to relax.  In our MaRococo Garden (weather permitting), you will enjoy a glass of bubbly and taste your chocolate canapé creations.

Truffle Rolling Workshop

Saturday 11th May 11am-12.15pm & Tuesday 14th May 6.45-8pm

Making truffles is a great introduction to working with chocolate. We’ll begin the workshop with an introduction to chocolate. The fun really begins in the chocolate kitchen. Each participant will have the opportunity to roll, dip and coat their way to delicious truffles.

Half Term Children’s Summer Treats Workshop

Thursday 30th May 11.30am-12.30pm

Come mix and stir your way to delicious summer time chocolate treats. With warm weather just around the corner, we will make a variety of chilled chocolate creations including frozen banana pops, chocolate milk shakes and other sweet treats! Children will take home all of their creations along with recipes to recreate at home (parental guidance recommended!)

Please contact Julie on 020 7245 0993 or events@rococochocolates.com for more information.