Exploring chocolate with children at Easter

So, the kids are home for the Easter holidays, and there’s only so much Bluey and Paw Patrol that can command their attention! Thankfully, there’s always chocolate. And you can leverage the world’s best chocolate into fun activities for children, where they and you can learn things together.

You’re a craft chocolate lover; but you might be wondering how you can include the children in your life in your enthusiasm. Well, this week, I’m stepping in for Spencer to share some ideas with you about how you can do just that, this Easter.

The weekly shop is getting harder every week for most families, but it’s made harder still at this time of year as parents have to run a gauntlet with their children down supermarket aisles adorned with mass-produced chocolate confectionery, packaged in eye-catching primary colours with adorable cartoon bunnies demanding their attention.
Know that you’re not alone; in supermarkets across the land, armies of parents and carers do battle with children desperate to add chocolate eggs and bunnies to the trolley.
But, as you know, these Easter products are little more than vaguely-chocolate-flavoured, egg-shaped sugar and palm oil, with nothing interesting to say beyond their marketing gimmicks. Maybe that sounds harsh, but anyone who’s savoured a sensational piece of craft chocolate knows the difference.

As I tell people in our virtual tastings, you can and should make whatever chocolate choices you want; if you want a Snickers to give you a little moment of bliss-point joy on a bad afternoon, then by all means. But there is (or should be) something special about Easter chocolate; so why not use this chocolate-centred celebration to concentrate on great flavours and shared experiences with craft chocolate?

I am an irredeemable chocolate geek, but I’m also a father to two children who are being unwittingly trained to be chocolate geeks of the future. Just based on some of our own experiences, here are just three ideas you can work with to make eating chocolate fun and engaging over Easter:

1. Don’t be afraid to challenge.

Despite my best efforts, both of my children, when given the choice, will always choose the lowest cocoa percentage possible. Really it’s just their biology; children are more sensitive to bitterness, and are predisposed to seek sweetness in foods. But don’t be fooled into thinking that the only chocolate they’re capable of enjoying is something super-sweet and milky. You can give them the challenge of testing how much their tastebuds can handle:

Assemble a little ‘chocolate flight’ with a range of intensities (my 8 year old, who acted as consultant for the writing of this, insisted on the inclusion of a 100% chocolate here!), but don’t let the little ones see which chocolates you’re using. Now you can do a blind-taste-test, working your way upwards from the lower cocoa percentages. For each chocolate, ask them to describe the flavours as best they can, and get them to take a guess at the percentage. Can they tell you when they’ve hit 100%? …I would guess they’ll let you know in no uncertain terms! Along the way you can ask them how the flavours are changing. Hopefully by the end you’ll have shown them that they can have fun and play with their senses using types of chocolate that they would never normally pick up.
If you want some serious bonus parenting points, you could have a go at doing some maths with the percentages …or maybe not if you want to keep it fun!

2. Use flavours to make connections.

‘Experiential learning’ is all about connecting hands-on activities with learning new things. Well, children won’t need much encouragement to get hands-on with eating chocolate! But before you let them loose to devour every piece of chocolate they can get their hands on, try to come up with a bit of structure that lets you talk to them, making connections between what’s in their mouth, and what’s in the wider world. With just two pieces of chocolate, you can create a learning experience that’ll be fun and rewarding for them and you:

Use two chocolates made with cocoa from different origins (ideally from the same maker, with the same cocoa percentage) and taste each of them with your child. Ask them to try and explain the flavours they can find but, importantly, ask them to make comparisons; “which one is sweeter?”, “which one is fruitier?”, “which one do you prefer? why?”. Once they’re engaging their senses, and making these distinctions, it’s a great time to hang other ideas on their experience: You could show them where the origins are on a map. You could Google some pictures of animals and landscapes from the different countries. You could look up what time it is in those places, and get them to imagine what the people are doing there while you eat chocolate.

3. Be cool with making a mess.

I’m a transparent fraud in giving you this advice. I’ve never been super-comfortable with the apocalyptic mayhem that children are capable of when it comes to ‘messy play’. But if I can get past my hang-ups, then I’m sure you can too, because giving children the freedom and space to make a mess is a powerful way to help them develop creativity and confidence. When it comes to chocolate-based activities, mess is part of the package. So make your preparations; cover everything with newspaper, create a clear route to the bathroom for rapid clean up, and embrace the muckiness!

Chocolate activities don’t require too many bells and whistles. Put away the ultra-processed Dr Oetker cupcake kits; you’d be surprised how fun simply melting and reforming chocolate into new shapes, adding inclusions and flavours along the way, can be. Of course, at Easter time, maybe egg shapes should be top of the list, but there’s no rules really. As you melt your favourite chocolate with them, get them to have a lick of the spoon and see whether the flavours change between solid and molten chocolate (just avoid any burnt tongues). And let them be creative; putting in anything that you don’t mind ending up in their mouths.

Whatever you end up doing, I hope you all have a load of fun. There’s plenty to be serious and grown-up about in the world of chocolate, but you’re missing half the point if you can’t find fun and joy in it. So whether you’re just nibbling at an Easter egg in your pyjamas on the Sunday morning, or engaging in a high-concept clue-based egg-hunt somewhere, just take a mindful moment to appreciate how chocolate is bringing you and your loved ones together.