Valentine’s Day Chocolates – 2015

One of the most important (and lucrative) times of the year for chocolatiers is Valentine’s day. So here is my round-up of the best British Valentine’s chocolate around, to please every chocolate aficionado.

Montezuma’s Valentine’s Chocolate Truffle Selection – £10.99 for 16 truffles

Beautiful packaging with diddy little truffles, with the following flavours:

• White chocolate with Strawberry ganache
• Milk chocolate with Maple Syrup ganache
• Dark Chocolate and White chocolate with Vanilla ganache

The Chocolate Society – The Valentine’s Collection 2015 – £24.50 for 18 handmade hearts

Artisan handmade chocolates, made with Valrhona couverture in small batches.

Flavours include:

• Blonde sea salt caramel
• Raspberry and Rose caramel
• Madagascan truffle

Demarquette – Chocolate Caramel Hearts – 6 hearts for £12

Melting caramels made with fresh fruit purées.

• Devon Strawberry caramel
• Passion Fruit caramel

Lauden – Strawberries & Cream Chocolates – £10 for 10 hearts

Dark chocolate shells filled with a dreamy strawberries and cream filling.

Chococo – The Love Pod – £17.50

A Venezuelan chocolate cocoa pod, filled with fresh truffles and chocolates.

Flavours include:

• Melting Milk Truffles
• Raspberry Riot
• Salt Sweet Smoke
• Romantic Rose
• Champagne and Kalamansi
• Perfect Passion

Melt – Valentine’s Box – 10 fresh chocolates for £19

• White chocolate bonbon with raspberry marshmallow filling
• Dark chocolate hearts with salted caramel
• Rose and Lychee pate de fruits
• Dark chocolate crunchy square
• Gianduja dome

And finally, my personal favourite…

The Chocolatier (Aneesh Popat)  – Love Heart – £25

A glorious chocolate heart, filled with Piedmont hazelnut praline, rice crisps, caramelised hazelnut crumble and popping candy. Deelish!

Now, although not strictly chocolate, I had to include this little beauty. The packaging, the contents and the description just made me salivate.

Anges de Sucre – Valentine’s Sweet Treat Box – £15

Each box includes two macarons, two marshmallows, one muffle (a marshmallow truffle) and two teacakes.

Happy Valentine’s everyone!

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Macaroon Making at L’Atelier Des Chefs

This weekend, I treated myself to a Macaron (or Macaroon) making class at the formidable L’Atelier Des Chef in their Oxford Circus branch. I honestly didn’t know what to expect, and was pleasantly surprised upon arriving, to be welcomed into a warm and friendly atmosphere, with a view of one of their kitchens in the background and a wonderful array of kitchen implements and gadgets galore to the left of the entrance.

We were shown to a large wooden table where I met the rest of the group (10 of us in total) and given some fetching plastic aprons to put on. Then we were let loose in the kitchen, under expert guidance from the friendly (and very patient) chef. Between us, we made the shells and fillings for the following flavours:

• Pink shells with a buttery salted caramel filling
• Vanilla white shells with a creamy praline crème pâtissière filling
• Orange shells with a zingy orange and lemon buttercream
• Green shells with a lip-licking chocolate and mint ganache

In groups of three or four, we blitzed, mixed and folded our way to near-perfect macaroons. Some were slightly flatter than others (due to over-mixing) some did not have the crunchy shell like some of the others (due to not drying out as much) but overall we had a fabulous batch of macaroons, to nibble on the train home. The best thing, was that we were able to learn from the chef, exactly what we were doing wrong and how to get it right next time. Just what I needed, as a complete Macaron novice!

We had two fun-filled hours and we didn’t feel rushed or under pressure to fit in too much in the time available. The class was very well organised and I am already itching to do one of their other classes – maybe one of the Baking courses (home-made jam doughnuts anyone?).