Last summer, some six months after I’d first tasted David Crichton’s Careless Collection bars, I asked him, in gloriously self-indulgent fashion, if he would like to collaborate on a set of bars based on my childhood food memories.
He said yes and I sent him a list of things that evoked strong reactions in me and left him to do all the hard work. Not surprisingly, nearly all of them were based around my Italian childhood, since I spent a great part of my childhood there, both my parents are Italian and all my cooking references were from there.
After much mixing and tasting, we have settled on four bars which encompass these memories. All the bars are coated in Pump Street chocolate so you know it’s ethical and, for me, local. The first is a 60% dark milk ‘buttered toast’ – toasted cream with butter-infused toast crumbs.
Then we have a 75% cocoa tangerine caramel with a rosemary ganache; a bar of coffee and cardamon ganache in 60% dark milk; and finally a 55% dark white (two-thirds white chocolate mixed with one-third dark, a blend of David’s own making) covering a rather gorgeous hazelnut cremino paste with whole hazelnuts.
The box is £20, with a 10% discount for my readers if you quote OBS in the next four weeks; and 10% of profits go to the Trussell Trust. Neither I nor the Observer make any money from it although I may have put on a pound or two with all the testing.
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