Chocolate is incredibly and wonderfully versatile. It adds magic to everything from biscuits to brownies, cakes to cookies, mouses to moles, ice cream to curries, bars to ‘bon-bons’. In many of these chocolate creations, chocolate is (ab)used as an ingredient; it’s used as a vector for flavour and sensations, and chocolate is UNBEATABLE at this. […]

Here in the UK our days are becoming noticeably longer: Now the clocks have gone forward, we have more daylight. And with more daylight we all suddenly seem to have more of that magical ingredient; time! So for the next two weeks we are going to reflect on the importance of TIME in craft chocolate. […]

There are lots of important dates and calendar related events this week and weekend: This Sunday, the clocks go forward in the UK, Daytime is now officially longer than night time (we’ve passed the March equinox), Easter is ALMOST here (and Passover starts Saturday night), Lockdown restrictions continue to ease (e.g. the Hampstead ponds for […]

‘Easter’ and ‘chocolate’ evoke contrasting associations. On the one hand are Easter eggs, chocolate bunnies, chicks and other chocolate concoctions. …On the other hand is the idea of giving up, fasting, and abstaining from the likes of chocolate, wine, and other indulgences. The two are obviously tied together with the idea of ‘breaking your fast’ […]

Easter Weekend is now less than three weeks away, and the UK is (hopefully) now starting to emerge from what seems like a VERY long third lockdown. So we’d like to invite you to join us in celebrating with two great new tastings with firstly WINE and secondly GIN (and tiramisu) (see below for more […]

Easter is rapidly approaching: We are delighted to launch our Easter offerings – along with a quick recap of the history of chocolate and Easter below. And we are also very excited about a pair of Fine Wine and Craft Chocolate Tastings that we are launching with Corney and Barrow on Thursday 25th March and […]

Globally we spend over $100Bn a year on chocolate, and about the same on coffee.  Yet whereas specialty coffee accounts for over 10% of coffee sales in almost every country drinking coffee, in no country does craft chocolate account for even 0.1% of chocolate sales.  This is despite both specialty coffee and craft chocolate really […]

Vanessa Kimbell is a legend in sourdough, baking, fair trade, the gut microbiome and much, much more. During the course of the evening, Spencer Hyman will be chatting to Vanessa about her Italian mother, how she first began working in the village bakery in France as a child, why she fell in love with bread […]

On this evening we’ll be joined by Original Beans founder, Philipp Kauffmann. Former conservationist at the World Wildlife Fund and the United Nations, Philipp started his chocolate-making venture with the focus on protecting farmers, the rainforest, and thousands of endangered species. All through the means of incredibly delicious and sustainably sourced cacao. Philipp’s chocolate kit […]

James Hoffmann, co-founder of Square Mile Coffee Roasters, author of The World Atlas of Coffee, YouTube sensation, World Barista Champion, Prufrock Coffee, to name just a few items of his work… is also a craft chocolate aficionado and a dear friend of Cocoa Runners. During this Craft Chocolate in Conversation with James, we’ll take a deep dive into some of […]