Chester’s design-a-chocolate competition winners and tasting events

May 25, 2013 in Chester, Events, News, Rococo Life by Charlie | No comments

Our Chester shop held a children’s design-a-chocolate competition, which was judged by Geoff Price. Geoff, an ex-jockey, race horse trainer and artist is a very well-known character who always knows what’s going on in Chester and visits us almost daily! You can find him at http://www.art-geoffreyprice.co.uk/

Geoff was very impressed with all the entries but singled out Elsa’s design as the winner and Zach and Samuel as runners up.

winner

This is Elsa’s design (we can see why Geoff might have liked this one!), which won her a goody bag of chocolate.

zachphoto

Zach being congratulated by Geoff.

samuelphoto

Samuel collecting his prize.

Zach and Samuel both won Rococo City farms, and Geoff had a vanilla ice cream for his trouble!

 

Earlier in May Chester also hosted a chocolate tasting event to celebrate our recent awards. It was a beautiful evening and we toasted the Chester store’s recent 1st birthday, Rococo’s 30th Anniversary and our award winning chocolates with a glass of Prosecco. The shop mirror is now decorated with congratulations from our lovely customers.

congrats

 

Plenty of people turned up to sample the our recent award winners: (deep breath!) White Cardamom Bar, Rose Otto Bar, Milk Sea Salt Bar, Grenada Nib-a-licious, House Truffle, Kalamansi Lime Caramel, Passionfruit and Rosemary Caramel and Salted Chocolate Toffee Praline. All the chocolates were very well received and it was agreed that the Kalamansi Lime was the overall favourite in Chester.


Flashback Friday: Chantal holds a tea party for her baby sister

May 24, 2013 in Chantal Coady by Charlie | No comments

Here we have another Flashback Friday, a glimpse into Chantal’s life and the development of Rococo Chocolates.

Tea party

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?


Summertime fun with chocolate – half term class on 31st May

May 23, 2013 in Chocolate Recipes, Original News, Rococo School by julie | No comments

getting ready to cookPlan something fun for your children for the upcoming half term.  At Rococo Chocolate School they can mix and stir their 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!)

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.


Rococo Loves: Ice Kitchen

May 21, 2013 in We Love by Charlie | No comments

Founded by our very own Cesar Roden, who you may have seen at food festivals in the past selling hot chocolate and ice cream from the Rococo Pod (our little Piaggio Ape van), Ice Kitchen makes artisan ice lollies by hand using fresh fruits, yoghurt, cream, nuts, chocolate, herbs and spices and other natural flavourings. We love what Cesar is doing, the freshness and innovation, and think he’ll be a great addition to the London food scene.

Cesar at Ice Kitchen on Southbank

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: Chantal in Borneo with Ros

May 17, 2013 in Chantal Coady by Charlie | No comments

Chantal’s father was a doctor specialising in tropical diseases, and the family moved frequently with his work. She thinks she was just under 2 years old in this sweet photo, which was taken in Borneo at the christening of her sister Ros.

Chantal at her sister's christening, about 18 months old

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


Sad news about our bees

May 16, 2013 in Chantal Coady, Rococo Life by Charlie | 1 comment

If you follow Rococo Chocolates or Chantal on Twitter, you might know that Chantal keeps bees.

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.
Chantal unpacks bees into hiveLast 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.

Rococo Honey in the making

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.

 


A closer look at our award-winning passion fruit & rosemary caramel

May 14, 2013 in Original News by Charlie | No comments

Our new passion fruit and rosemary caramel is one of the chocolates in our limited edition gift box (sold online at 20% off retail price).

 

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!

Rococo passion fruit and rosemary caramel

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!


Ask Chantal: is white chocolate really chocolate?

May 13, 2013 in Chantal Coady, Chocolate, How Chocolate Is Made by Charlie | No comments

Chantal loved this question from Hannah Gross. It’s something she deals with in her new book, but she was happy to talk a bit more about it here.

White chocolate with cardamom

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.


A closer look at our award-winning salted chocolate toffee & crunchy praline

May 11, 2013 in Chocolate by Charlie | Comments closed

Next up on our list of Academy of Chocolate gold award winners is the salted chocolate toffee and crunchy praline.

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

Rococo Chocolates Salted Chocolate Toffee & Crunchy Praline

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.

Rococo Award Winning Chocolates


Flashback Friday: Chantal on her first birthday

May 10, 2013 in Chantal Coady by Charlie | Comments closed

Chantal was born in Tehran, and the family returned to London before moving to Borneo. Chantal was too young to remember, but this picture with her father was taken in that brief period in London, probably in Regent’s Park.

Chantal Coady's first birthday

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!

 

 


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