You all know that my passion is
making artisan chocolate from the finest raw ingredients but did you also know that, as well as selling it through my online shop, I also
cater for your special occasions.
Chocolate parties are indulgent and lots of fun and I recently helped bring a sweet touch to Elsie’s 6
th birthday.
If you ever want to win the admiration of a group of small people, give them access to a table set out with lots of chocolate and sweets – their eyes were out on stalks from the moment they saw it!
They couldn’t wait to get going so I started them off by letting them decorate some chocolate pizza bases that I’d made earlier. I put out bowls of jelly beans, Maltesers, mini marshmallows, Smarties, Dolly Mixtures, chocolate chips and buttons, along with some liquid chocolate to act as glue.
The party girls eagerly got to work and the sweets got piled on so high that in most cases the finished designs looked less like a pizza and more like Mount Vesuvius…(it was quite fitting really as both are linked to the
same region of Italy: Naples!)
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After the pizzas it was time for cake pops: more swirly, squidgy dipping in gooey milk chocolate then various toppings were stuck all over.
The children were fascinated with it, in particular a three year old who kept making everybody look at the ‘chocolate dancing’! Isn’t that just the perfect way to describe it?
[INTERESTING CHOCOLATE FOUNTAIN FACT:
the world’s largest chocolate fountain can be found at the Bellagio resort in Las Vegas (where else?) inside the Jean-Philippe Pâtisserie. It’s 8 metres tall!]
The children finally got to dip strawberries and marshmallows into the fountain. Cue lots of laughing as their faces got gradually covered with more and more smears of chocolate.
When you have the calculation ‘children + chocolate x excitement’ there’s always potential for the answer to be ‘MESS!’ but I was impressed with how brilliant the girls were at keeping the chaos on the table and not all over the carpet.
It was a lovely afternoon and I hope that Elsie will remember her chocolate party for a long time to come.
(I’ll remember it too but for a slightly messier reason…)
On every other occasion that I’ve used the chocolate fountain for an event I’ve always cleaned it at the venue before transporting it home. On this particular occasion, however, there was a lot of tidying up to be done at the party itself so I thought ‘I know! I’ll save time now by laying it on a tray and sorting it out when I get home.’(Can you see where this might be going?)
When I arrived back at my house I opened the boot and…found a chocolate flood! The entire space was awash with the stuff and it took me far longer to clean that up than it would have done if I’d washed the fountain in the first place! Still, at least the car smells good…
