Artists of Chocolate

Inside the Notting Hill store.

I recently celebrated 24 years on this earth and one of my gifts was a chocolate tasting event at Artisan du Chocolat. So yesterday I popped down to Notting Hill with my nephew to experience a two hour chocolate tasting of what has to be the best chocolate I've ever had.

A salted caramel.

I'm no stranger to Artisan du Chocolat. With an outlet at Selfridges on Oxford Street, London, I've had their chocolates before but because they're relatively pricey and so delicious it's been as a gift or treat. At this tasting we were given a rundown of the company which is still relatively new at only 10 years old. The company remains relatively small as they don't want to expand and in the process lose the quality of their chocolate; which is completely understandable.

At the tasting we were treated to cocoa beans, the raw base chocolate, 100% chocolate, chocolate made from cocoa beans from java, vietnam, haiti and the congo. There was milk chocolate, buffalo milk chocolate which absolutely melted in your mouth, and almond milk chocolate which is suitable for vegans and lactose intolerant people. We were also given cocoa butter to taste and it smelled and tasted what I reckon my palmers cocoa butter lotion would taste like if I tried it. I learned that adding cocoa butter is very important in the chocolate making process and quality chocolatiers add it to the chocolate and cheaper chocolates don't. Check the ingredients of the next chocolate you have and see if cocoa butter is added to it.

Chocolate Fondant Cake

Chocolate is something you can play with and these artists of chocolate love to add different things to theirs. I tasted chocolate with lemongrass and ginger, tobacco, mexican chilli and other spices, sage and thyme, guiness, black pepper, lavender, raspberry and dark chocolate truffles. Artisan du Chocolat's signature chocolate is the Salted Caramels. The launching pad for this was one of Gordon Ramsey's restaurants and it was such a big hit. Adding unrefined sea salt to caramel and pairing it with chocolate is an absolute delight. They've also included a banana puree to this, pink and black peppercorns and an assorted variety of flavours to their salted caramel. Did I mention they even have salted caramel ice cream. Super yum! It was served with a chocolate fondant cake... which was super scrumptious. To wash it all down was water and there was an alcoholic drink, a bellini which is sparkling wine usually mixed with peach puree but was instead mixed with the pulp of the cocoa.

To finish off this evening I got a goodie bag with a taster package which included four gourmet chocolates, two pearls/salted caramels and two of their O's. There was even a 10% discount off everything in store. Needless to say I made a killing while tasting almost every chocolate that they had on sale. Thank you to my nephew and sister for gifting me with such a pleasurable evening with chocolate. Oh, by the way, I felt physically ill after all that chocolate.

Me with my salted caramel ice cream.