We are already halfway through April and I come along now invading your inbox with my first blog post in 2025. Time just evaporates! No excuses so let’s jump right into it.

The past months have been nothing short of exciting in my world and the world of chocolate. At least that’s what it feels like when you sum it all up.

In February my mom and I shot the Academy of Chocolate Awards Ceremony at Fortnum & Mason. Below is a highlight video of the evening. It was their first awards ceremony in 5 years.

The same month we travelled to Paris for chocolate research and discovered some true gems I’ll be sharing with you soon. One of them is Patrick Roger, a metal sculptor and chocolatier.

At the end of February, I made my very first chocolate bar with beans from West Papua. A big ‘Thank You’ goes out to Phil Landers for helping me get started. I made a 70% bar and it’s pretty darn good for a first one. Ask my family. It’s all gone!

In March, we picked up on our own chocolate investigation in London visiting makers, melters and bonbon creators. One of them was Robert from XO Chocolate. Funnily enough we took photos of him on the AoC awards night without any one of us realising until we met him again at the store!

He’s got a beautiful space with even prettier bonbons right in Fitzrovia. I’ll be writing a more detailed post about him and the other shops we visited very soon. Another marvellous discovery was a brick and mortar shop of Love Cocoa by James Cadbury in central London.

What’s more, on our annual visit to Budapest we swung by our favourite bakery Artizán. They had a chocolate L’Escargot, which makes any chocolate fiend very happy. Besides excellent bread you can enjoy a bowl of savoury porridge next door at their porridge bar. I do wish there was one in London!

The porridge was a salty base of oats with roasted cauliflower, tahini and crunchy granola.

One thing I can’t get enough of is chocolate porridge for breakfast. If you want the recipe let me know! (FYI, those are my daily drugs for all the vitamins you lack when living in London for an extended period of time.)

Continuing with viennoiserie worth raving about. August Bakery in Battersea opened and with it a whole range of mouth-watering bakes. We love the classics and our favourite is the pain au chocolate.

They use Original Beans and the pastry itself is not fatty nor overly sweet. It strikes the perfect balance. One more thing, the hot chocolate here comes from Bare Bones and is simply excellent. Have it with their home-made orange marmalade for another kick of flavour dimension!

Last week I finished making my third bar of chocolate, an 85% with beans from Kablon Farms in the Philippines. Thanks to Estela for smuggling a kilo in her suitcase back to London. Those little gold nuggets are truly special and the flavour notes we are getting from it are phenomenal. I’m still wrapping my head around it but it’s safe to say that it tastes of biscuits.

One of my latest discoveries is a fast and easy chocolate tofu pudding. Make in under 10 minutes and polish it off in 10 secs. It’s healthy and will satisfy any sweet cravings.

Makes enough for 3 small ramekins:

• 400g of medium firm tofu (drained)
• 200g of melted dark chocolate
• honey to sweeten if necessary
• blend all 3 ingredients in a food processor
• serve immediately and enjoy

This sums up four months and there’s plenty more in the chocolate pipeline to come.

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter and plenty of delicious chocolate to enjoy.

Lots of love,

Robin

Ps: AI Anime is taking over the net so here is a version of myself with cacao in Piura.