Remember, remember ….

…the 5th of November!

This is one of my most favourite parts of the year as the leaves turn brown, orange, yellow with the sun sparkling on them. Cold dry air and crunchy leaves under foot. Smells of burning, scurrying little creatures building hideouts, lovely clear days wrapped up snuggly warm.

Then comes Halloween with beautiful bright bold orange, green and purple in dominance – children get excited at the thought of dressing up – will it be skeletons or witches? Will it be gruesome or a sweet little witches cat? Broomsticks abound! Trick or treating, carved pumpkins and candles everywhere. Buckets full of sweets the children come home with their delights …. a few days rest and then the absolutely magical and musical fire filled skies begin.

Beautiful, bright and bold colours brighten up the sky with gold, silver, electric blue, pink and green showers lightening up the darkened evening.

And then darkness and happy, tired families having had a beautiful evening …. I so love this time of year – Can you tell?

We’ve never had an event on Bonfire Night in the evening and I am just sooooo excited to be at The Palmhouse in Sefton Park on Bonfire Night – Treacle Toffee, Salted Caramel, Cinder Toffee, Hot Chocolate – so many delightful things to make…. I really, really can’t wait!!!

Our chocolates are also available online at : www.thechocolatecellar.co.uk/store
Workshop Details: www.thechocolatecellar.co.uk/workshops

Thank you

Tuesday, September 30th, 2014

Had to make this one a thank you post … we are very slowly working on updating our website and had an issue with our blog. Huge thank you to Sarah at DSA Media for sorting it out.

Also thank you to both Alyx and Tania who left us in September to continue on to pastures new – we wish them both the very best in their new paths. They will be missed.

And finally … thank you to all of you – we have had a mad month in September and enjoyed it immensely – it has been great seeing you all at the events we’ve been to and being part of so many fabulous projects and events.

Details of future events coming up in our next blog …. we have a few magical ones lined up for Christmas!! (It’s the end of September … think I’m allowed to talk about Christmas now!!) 

In the meantime - we're taking bookings for our Christmas Chocolate Making workshop which will allow you to make your own fabulous chocolates for friends and family - places are limited so book soon - Click here for full details.

Wishing everyone a very happy October :)

Rhubarb

Being a chocolatier, I feel like I ought to write about Mothers Day or about Easter, but this week I am inspired to write about Rhubarb.... yes – Rhubarb!

I just love it. How did I not know this sooner?! I used to enjoy the odd rhubarb crumble but never really thought beyond that. Then a couple of summers ago I discovered pink lemonade – yum yum! Did you know pink lemonade is made with rhubarb?

Anyway, a lovely customer of ours mentioned rhubarb and brought some to us at the last Liverpool Food and Drink Festival (Thanks Johanna!).  The idea was to candy it, but unfortunately my candying skills didn’t really work so we left it on the back burner (not literally).

I forgot about it for a while and then saw a tweet from Claremont Farm saying fresh Rhubarb in stock. So when I went in to deliver some chocs last week I picked up some Rhubarb.

It looks quite innocent, but I think the leaves are poisonous?

I candied it successfully this time – Hurrah!!  - then proceeded to use it in our chocolate.

If you would like to have a go at candying Rhubarb (and I really would urge you to – it’s so brilliant) – here’s how:

Ingredients:

6 stalks of Rhubarb

225g Caster Sugar (Plus 25g extra for later)

3 tablespoons of water

Method:

1.       Preheat oven to about 120 degrees C / Gas mark 1

2.       Chop the rhubarb into thin strips of about 6 inches or so (I got bored with doing them the same size and played around a bit, but it is better to have them all about the same size – they will then dry out evenly)

3.       Place the sugar and water in a pan and heat .

4.       Gently stir until all of the sugar has dissolved

5.       Take the pan off the heat and throw in the rhubarb – give it a mix so that all of the rhubarb is coated in the sugar syrup.

6.       Leave for half hour. (In this time you could be preparing your parchment paper on the baking trays ... or having a cup of tea)

7.       Take the rhubarb out and place onto baking trays lined with parchment paper. Make sure none of the pieces are touching each other.

8.       You will be left with liquid that is a mixture of sugar syrup and rhubarb. It tastes delicious. Not sure what to do with the rhubarb syrup yet – seems a shame to bin it – so let me know if you come up with an idea!

9.       Place trays in oven for an hour and then check – if the rhubarb isn’t as dry as you want it leave for another 10 mins – remove rhubarb and place in the caster sugar that you had saved

10.    Once cooled, place in an airtight container.

Hope this works for you – let me know how you get on!

PS – we have got easter eggs and mothers day treats for sale at our pop up shop in 12 Princes Parade on Friday 28^th March as well as our online shop!