We're extremely excited about the advent of Farm Feast 2015 at Claremont Farm - this has replaced the old "Wirral Food and Drink Festival".

It always has a fantastic atmosphere, lovely producers, organisers and volunteers.

We will be looking forward to being in the courtyard and promise to bring you some delightful little treats as well as the delicious macarons. The macarons do normally run out fairly early so make sure you are the early bird!

We'll also be running a little competition over the weekend so do pop by our stall to see how you could the winner of some amazing gifts.

See you there?! (Please bring some sunshine!)

10 YEARS OLD!

Tuesday, February 10th, 2015
We are very excited that on this Saturday (14th February) The Chocolate Cellar will be celebrating it’s 10th Birthday!
It has been 10 years since Bala  decided to sell chocolates at Wirral Farmers Market and took on her first stall. It has been a fabulous journey with amazing support from our wonderful customers.
As a “Thank You” to our loyal customers, we are having a “Golden Ticket” Giveaway. 100 envelopes will be given out to our customers on Saturday 14th February at Wirral Farmers Market –  10 of these will contain Golden Tickets. These tickets will allow entry to a Special Chocolate Making Workshop being held on 11th April 2015  at New Ferry Village Hall from 2pm to 4pm.

Good Luck – we hope to see you there!

Bold Street – Bolder and Brighter than ever?

January this year was more of a shock to me than usual  – just the cold weather after such a warm summer and autumn, slightly drab days after the brightly lit stores and magical fairy lights of Christmas. That “Back to School” feeling – really left me hankering for duvet days more than ever before.

Trying to shake it off I took a wander along Bold Street. Many years ago when I first moved to Liverpool a friend mentioned Bold St to me, but I never really explored it then. It is one of those places which you want to drift along and in my commodity trading days I never really drifted but strode with a purpose and tended to bypass everyday magic. More and more over the past few years I have found Bold street start to become a little Bohemian Haven . The little businesses there are a real credit to the city with their very individual styles and approaches.

I find it truly uplifting when I wander along here listening and just soaking in the atmosphere.

So – I did this in my little daze a few weeks ago and came away truly inspired.

A result of the daze is our Bold Street Collection – a collection of truffles inspired by those wonderful eateries ....  we hope you enjoy reading about it on this link (you can also order it here)

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!

Wedding Show

A few months ago … just after Christmas I was sat round the table at a Ministry of Desserts meeting and Maria, our minister of flowers said she would really like us to organise a wedding fair together.

Wow! We all agreed with her to some degree, but were a little bit reluctant to commit to this as we all had our own individual businesses to run as well.  It was an exciting prospect too!

So in the midst of Valentines Day, Mothers Day and Easter, we have been working together to plan this Wedding Show.

The whole point of this show is to create something unique and different. We have planned with military precision the decor of the hall, the setting and the exhibitors. The exhibitors are hand-picked local independent businesses who truly want to provide an extra special and unique service to make any occasion stand out.  There will be no hard sell on the day – the idea is to make it a joy to plan the day, not a chore!

It has been great fun working with everyone and now the day is almost upon us!

I have been told by the other ministers “loose lips sink ships” so this is all I will say for now about the show, but I truly hope you will join us for this event and come and see for yourself!

The show is on 4th May … 3 to 5pm and will be held at  Wallasey Village URC, CH45 3LP