There have been times when things have got messy between me and chocolate. Paris, aged 17: I found these amazing praline bars (the name long evaporated from memory) that I bought for relatives back home. But one afternoon, bored, housebound and homesick, I ate them all. All. When I was a new mother, sleep- deprived and lactating, I once hid a Dairy Milk the size of a rug in the car and went and ate giant, frenzied mouthfuls when no one was looking. Neither of these were proud moments.
A few weeks ago, I got a delivery from Misco’s. I wasn’t expecting it, I hadn’t ordered it. Inside were chocolates the size of snooker balls. I put them away to test later. I worked, I watched some telly, I did some ironing, but the thought of them trepanned into my head all afternoon. I had seen chocolates this big before, at Puccini in Amsterdam, and I had avoided them, with good reason. You can’t commit to a chocolate that size and leave any behind.
They are called Flourless Madagascan Chocolate Cake Balls, but they are more like giant, knee-weakening truffley chocolates. They’re not cheap (£5-£6.10 for two, 120g; miscoschocolates.com), but you can easily spend that on crap and these are not. The orange ones were the outright winner, even though I have an odd relationship with chocolate and orange; the dark chocolate version my second favourite. It’s best you don’t know how many I ate and it’s best for you if you don’t buy them. If you do, you have to eat them within two weeks, so you’ve only got yourself to blame.
