Cocoba Chocolate Introduces “The Best of British” Summer Picnic Treats

Kent's Cocoba, the chocolate company famed for producing irresistible chocolate and hot chocolate treats and gifts, has launched a fantastic range of quintessentially British chocolate bars.

Inspired by favourite and popular British desserts the Cocoba “Best of British Chocolate Bars”, all priced at £4.50 individually or in a pack at £18, make a superb addition to any summer picnic.  

“The Best of British Chocolate Bar Selection,” is created using only the highest-quality Belgian chocolate, include something for everyone from sticky toffee pudding, apple crumble, Eaton mess and lemon meringue flavours.

Tasting just like the real desert, is the new and indulgent “Sticky Toffee Pudding Chocolate Bar” topped with white chocolate drizzle, crunchy salted caramel balls and toffee pieces, an ideal picnic treat for those with a sweet tooth.

Want something to tantalise the taste buds? Then “The Apple Crumble Chocolate Bar” is ideal. As it's topped with white chocolate drizzle, apple pieces, and shortbread crumble. This deliciously sweet concoction is a chocolate bar and one of the best British desserts, all in one glorious package!

Well, it just wouldn't be a very British picnic without a traditional strawberry theme, would it? And “The Eton Mess Chocolate Bar” fits the bill absolutely perfectly.  A Belgian milk chocolate bar is topped with white chocolate drizzle, freeze-dried strawberries, meringue pieces, and strawberry flavoured crunchy balls, all to create a British classic.

Finally, to add a zingy sweetness “The Lemon Meringue Chocolate Bar” is infused with lemon oil, and is topped with white chocolate drizzle, white meringue pieces, and lemon sugar drops. This sweet and sherberty concoction is a winning combination to complete a very British picnic.

Since the launch in 2012 Cocoba Chocolate ensure that each product is specially made with the highest quality, great tasting ingredients.

Please visit Cocoba Chocolate's website for more information including the hot chocolate bombes, spoons and vegan product range at www.CocobaChocolate.com.

What else is there? Cocoba's chocolate products include Belgian hot chocolate, chocolate bars and lollipops, truffles and buttons, and a growing range of vegan chocolates, too.

Cocoba's range is available from www.CocobaChocolate.com as well as Cocoba's flagship chocolate café at the Bluewater Shopping Centre in Kent, independent farm shops, delis, John Lewis, Selfridges and more.  All products are handmade in Kent.

Oggs for Eggs

We owe an apology to those wonderful folks over at Oggs. The publication of this post was delayed by the dreaded COVID.

If you are lucky, you have an eggs free cake shop within easy reach of you. Their cakes are really delicious and great for people who are allergic to eggs or who are vegans.

However, egg free cakes made at home haven't always been as tasty or as "good" as cakes made with eggs.

But! Now with the introduction of the real alternatives to eggs, Oggs, you, too can also make egg free cakes that are just as good as the very best cakes.

Using soya-based alternatives isn't an option for us, as my wife has a soya allergy so the fact Oggs doesn't use soya is a real blessing for us.

The Oggs eggs alternative is  Aquafaba, which is chickpea water, and it works perfectly every time. It's ideal for vegan baking, all you need do is just whip and whisk it just like an egg in all of your favourite recipes.

Their 200ml carton is great for home bakers and shakers, and the 1L carton ideal for professional bakers, chefs and bartenders.

So if you own a bakery you too can start making vegan cakes and sweet and savoury treats just like the egg free cake bakeries!

And if you miss having scrambled eggs at breakfast, lunchtime, teatime or for supper, they have Scrambled Oggs which whop up to make a perfect and very tasty alternative to traditional scrambled eggs which are great by themselves, on toast or with vegan sausages, vegan bacon or vegan burgers or with vegan cheese grated on top.

They are available in Waitrose, Tesco, Co-Ops, Sainsbury branches and other retailers.

Not only do they produce the Aquafaba egg alternatives, they also bake delicious cakes and hot puddings, too!

Some restaurants and cocktail bars offer Aquafaba products, too. And you can use them in your own restaurant or premises.

To learn more please visit them here https://www.loveoggs.com.

Hand-Made Australian Christmas Puddings From Pudding Lane

From an inherited prize-winning family recipe, Pudding Lane award-winning Christmas puddings are proudly hand-made in Australia with the finest quality fruit selected from Australia's pasturelands and well sourced fresh ingredients; fresh free range eggs, fresh butter, fresh breadcrumbs (crumbed by hand), flour, sugar from Australia's tropical north, spices and the finest brandy, matured in American Oak, from the world famous Barossa Valley wine region of South Australia.
Pudding Lane Christmas Fare:

(1) (2) (3)

(1) Classic Christmas - Australia's finest handmade prize-winning Christmas pudding
(2) Date & Toffee Log - a delicious sticky date texture with luxurious toffee
(3) Australian Macadamia Nuts and Barossa Valley Brandy - Organic Macadamia Nuts, finest matured in oak Bandy and some gourmet magic

Available to purchase from: www.porterfoods.co.uk

Food miles and the environment

'In Australia we talk about "paddock to plate", (field to fork) but the meaning is the same, no matter where in the world you are, most people want to know what food companies like Pudding Lane are doing to help and minimize their impact on the natural Environment.

Pudding Lane has a unique handmade method that has been unchanged for 100 years or more. Unlike most other pudding manufacturers, who ship all their many ingredients from the corners of the world, we use only locally sourced ingredients, and so, even though our puddings come from Australia, ours create far fewer food miles and energy waste than a pudding that is made in the UK.

We have based our reputation for quality on the "boiled-in-the-cloth" method. That is, we select the finest ingredients, local, combine these ingredients by hand, including fresh bread (from a local bakery that we hand-crumb) add the "wet-mix" of fresh butter, fresh Free Range eggs (hand cracked), Brandy and then hand-mix the mixture. This pudding mixture is then hand-weighed with spoons into lined boiling cloths. The cloths are actually "squares" of unbleached calico and are reused over and over to make many hundreds of puddings.

If the calico square develops a small hole, then we cut it down neatly to make another (smaller) size of pudding and so the process continues. The puddings are hand-tied with twine, then cooked (boiled) in (gas fired) "coppers" before being hung, again by hand, individually on a line to age and mature in advance for Christmas.

When the puddings have been hung and dried we then take them off the line, cut them out of the cloth, dress them in plain cotton fabric to sell and the only disposable part of our pudding making process is a short piece of cotton twine used to tie the pudding cloth up with prior to cooking. The puddings are packaged in cartons made from 100% recycled material and dispatched.

In this way, we do not use any automated processes, no production lines, no electric steam ovens (in fact we don't even have a conventional oven in our pudding kitchen), we do not use plastic basins, plastic bowls or moulds to shape the puddings, each and every pudding is different, only the same supreme moist taste is the same - but each and every pudding is unique!

Many people who know our method and also who visit our pudding kitchen are amazed at the level of detail, at the hand-made method, the hard work, but also that we can make many many tonnes of puddings every year - but each and every one, without ever changing the method and almost no machinery whatsoever, is made individually by hand.

These days however, we are less accidental in our philosophy of the environment. We have a practical commitment to community involvement and make sure that our ingredients are; fresh and local, that our method is maintained by our strict Haccp controls and that we just make traditional Christmas puddings in the old-fashioned (environmental) way.'

Two ‘Golds’ for legendary Christmas pudding

The only thing missing from a festive celebration with a Feeding Your Imagination Christmas pudding this year will be frankincense and myrrh...

Christmas is going to be extra special this year for Feeding Your Imagination and Master Chef Paul Da-Costa-Greaves. The Bristol based fine food company have received Gold in the 2011 Great Taste Awards and Gold in the 2011 Taste of the West Awards.

The multi-award winning food brand entered their famous Christmas pudding into both Taste of the West and the Great Taste Awards, and won. The Great Taste Awards are organised by the Guild of Fine Food and are widely acknowledged as the benchmark for speciality food and drink - described by many as the ‘Oscars’ of the food industry. The prestigious Taste of the West Awards is also one of the most highly respected in the food and drinks industry and is run by Taste of the West, based in Devon.

The Christmas pudding is part of a premium food range from Feeding Your Imagination, headed up by Celebrity Chef, Paul Da-Costa-Greaves. ‘As an innovative company, both the Great Taste Awards and the Taste of the West are extremely important to us. We are excited to have won two more Gold awards which will now certainly differentiate our Christmas pudding from the norm. These independent awards offer absolute confidence to the consumer that the product they are buying comes with a reliable seal of approval purely based upon great taste,’ says Paul.

Having developed the recipe over 15 years ago, after ‘pinching’ it from his Jamaican Aunt, Paul has gone on to refine and adapt the Christmas pudding. It is now Gluten free, suitable for vegetarians and does not contain any suet. The overall result is a festive pudding that is fruity and light in texture. It comes wrapped in a muslin cloth and presented in a striking carry box, making it ideal for gifting.

Paul, who has delighted the West Country foodies with his Christmas pudding for many years and has become quite legendary in the Devon fine food circles, says. ‘I am absolutely thrilled to have won two Golds this year for the pudding, it’s fantastic to receive acknowledgement from independent sources for all of the hard work we’ve put in over the years, to get the pudding to where it is now.

We have never stopped listening to our customers and we continue to refine our products based on the feedback from the market. The “Chrimbo Pud” is vegetarian and we also have full Gluten and Wheat free approval from the Coeliac Society. We also approached Courvoisier this year to request a license agreement, as we only use their VS Cognac in our puddings. We were delighted to have been granted full approval from Courvoisier to promote their brand on our packaging and I believe we are the only Christmas Pudding manufacturer to have this!’

All entries to the Great Taste Awards are judged by three different judging panels at three different venues. The Taste of the West Awards take the best part of a year to coordinate, from launch to judging, culminating in the awards ceremony which will be held in November 2011 in the Mediterranean Biome at the Eden Project.

The Chrimbo Pud from Feeding Your Imagination will serve 6-8 people and is certified Gluten free and suitable for vegetarians. Purchased either online at www.chrimbopud.co.uk or from independent delicatessens and various retail outlets across the UK, details of which are available on the company website.

Feeding Your Imagination has a premium range of puddings, chocolate bars and gourmet seaweed sauce products which are all available throughout the UK, either online or via approved stockists.

For further information, where you can purchase or how to become a stockist, please visit; www.feeding-your-imagination.co.uk or email; eatme@feeding-your-imagination.co.uk.

Join the Birmingham Pudding and Desert Club

Despite the current climate of doom and gloom, the people of the Midlands - and further afield, have shown that they are determined to get their just desserts.

The Birmingham Pudding and Dessert Club launched by locally-based event and banqueting caterer Redcliffe has a waiting list for each of its events – held in the Victorian splendour of the City’s renowned Botanical Gardens.

Redcliffe Director Colin Cook said, “The Birmingham Pudding and Dessert Club has been an amazing success. Some might find this enthusiastic reaction surprising – after all we keep being told that we are all cutting back on eating out!

“This is not our experience, however. In times of recession, people need an affordable treat to cheer themselves up – and when things are going well, they want to celebrate. We provide a dazzling array of pure indulgence in the form of our delicious desserts matched by a suitable dessert wine to accompany the dish – and preceded by a tantalising main course.

“The dessert selection is different for each event and really gives our chefs the opportunity to experiment.

“One of the features of the Pudding and Dessert Club is our inimitable master of ceremonies Jason Pritchett who makes everyone feel relaxed and lose any guilt complexes that they may have!

“There is a lot of fun and enjoyment involved - and at the end of the evening, we ask our diners to vote for the best desserts and to suggest new alternatives for the next event.”

The Birmingham Pudding and Dessert Club began in 2009 and has attracted hundreds of diners more than happy to pay £24-95 for a light main course, a selection of up to 10 hand-crafted desserts and accompanying wines. Each event is normally sold out in advance. The next event takes place on Thursday 15th September.

To find out more about the Birmingham Pudding and Dessert Club, call Freephone: 0800 389 8950.

Redcliffe Catering manages events, conferences and catering at selected venues such as Birmingham’s Botanical Gardens and at its Town Hall, the Birmingham Centennial Centre and the Royal Pump Rooms in Leamington Spa. It also has a separate contract catering division with over 35 contracts around the UK. and for more information about the event and catering facilities operated by Redcliffe Catering, go to www.redcliffe.com.