I am a sucker for lifestyle suggestions and pretty packaging. Show me a picture of someone wearing fingerless gloves, cupping a marshmallow-crowned hot chocolate and I’m there. So when I found some chocolates that not only had gorgeous packaging but were named after the sort of occasion where you might eat it, well.
This was Josh’s Chocolate, which I found on a freezing day in a shop called Join in Clare, Suffolk, although the company is Cornish. There were beautifully packaged giant chocolate buttons, £4.60 (145g), but it was the bars that got me. Stunningly illustrated by Joanne Barry (shout out to the artists!), paper-jacketed and with names such as Weekends on the Water (milk chocolate with Cornish sea salt and caramel), A Ramble in the Woods (milk chocolate with blueberry and hazelnut), and A Stroll Along the Harbour (milk, cranberry, almond, cinnamon). But the one that spoke to me, as my nose reddened with the warmth of the shop vs the cold outside, was Friends by the Fire, 55% dark with little chunks of ginger, illustrated with a picture of friends, indeed, sitting by a wood burner, ignoring its carcinogenic effects.
This isn’t single-origin craft chocolate, but it’s very nice at £3.95 a bar (100g), and various other permutations are available, plus hot chocolate spoons (a chunk of chocolate on the end of a lolly stick to dunk into warm milk). It’s like a card and a chocolate in one and a few bars of this would make a lovely present to cheer up someone’s January.
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