I'm getting into doing chocolate work at home to relax and get creative again. I've finally gotten the hang of tempering the chocolate and I have more polycarbonate moulds due for delivery soon 😁

I've loved dark chocolate ever since my Dad bought me a Cadbury Bournville for the first time about 20 years ago. I work in kitchens and I'm a total foodie. I love trying different things and supporting small brands. My friend came back from a trip with some cocoa beans as a gift for me and I actually managed to make them into chocolate at home..... gritty, bitter chocolate but chocolate nonetheless 😅 Soon after I was on a trip with my bf and got to visit Hazel Mountain Chocolate - Ireland's only bean to bar chocolate maker, or so they said. This was so much fun and it felt like my love for great chocolate had been totally renewed.

Photo: I was in the process of packaging up some of my chocolate truffles for family gifts. Some are filled withe white chocolate and vanilla ganache, and some with dark sea salt ganache. Itravelled abroad to attend a big family party and I felt like I had something special to gift my cousins on a happy occasion. I actually wanted to add more photos but couldn't figure out how

Question for the community: where in the world have you had great chocolate experiences?

Okay, I know this isn't a respectable brand and mostly just makes gimmicky chocolate, but I wanted something fun instead of bean-to-bar and I liked their tomato chocolate and one with brownie bits that was "okay." One that tasted like biscoff cookie butter sounded nice!

This one is disgusting. It's worse than Crunch bar level. The chocolate is advertised as mixed with "cookie butter", it's not. They added "butter flavor" (pretty sure that's not what cookie butter means!) and the chocolate has all of these horrible tiny holes and tastes nothing like chocolate or cookie butter in ANY way. The consistency was not there at all for chocolate, flavored chocolate, etc. There are also these "cookie" bits in it that don't have the taste or consistency of any cookie I would ever suffer through. I ate a single bite and then threw the $12.00 (?!?!?) bar directly into the trash. It tasted cheap and, tbh, I want a tearful apology from whoever runs that place because there's no way anyone tried that bar before it went on shelves.

My advice: stay away from Compartés

Does this chocolate (specifically the salty dark) taste different to anyone else over the last few months? It tastes old and stale now IMO.

Hiiii everyone! I'd love recommendations for instant hot chocolate mixes, the kind you put in hot milk or water (ew) and stir and you're done. It's a lot more convenient than melting straight up chocolate bars, especially for when I'm at work.

To this day, I haven't found a hot chocolate mix I liked. They're always just too sweet or don't taste like chocolate at all, usually a combination of both. Got a supposedly fancy, renowned Italian brand of instant hot chocolate from my relatives last year, and it was atrocious, just straight sugar with no hint of chocolate or cocoa powder in sight.

Is there genuinely just nothing out there that actually tastes like chocolate? Just a hint of sweetness (or none at all, I can always just add a bit of sugar if I find it too bitter) instead of a literal sugar bomb?

I live in Europe, so I'd appreciate it if any of you could provide locally available suggestions, but I'll honestly take anything.

I've been fermenting a pod's worth of beans for around 24 hours now. It's just for a home experiment, so no perfect protocol.

I've kept them in the oven, with the beans in a sieve with a dish underneath to collect liquid, and a water bowl on the same shelf to provide moisture. I started on a low heat aiming for ~30°C.

I opened a bean, and inside it's already brown and wavy-looking, which matches pictures of what some fully fermented beans look like. No purple, although I know it can vary by variety.

The outside of the beans look quite dry, with little pulp left which has hardened around some in white patches that I first thought were mould. They smell bready.

Not sure whether it's best to continue for 2+ more days as I had planned, or change anything about the set up. Any advice?

Surprised I didn’t find more posts on similar brands (other than one post for the US) but this brand has been going viral especially for cheat meals

https://www.instagram.com/hvywght_chocolate?xtok=MTVnbzI3MmsyMnRhOA==

I’ve been wanting to grab a bar or two but they sell out each drop in less than a minute and with shipping comes out to a crazy 40 bucks a bar anyway

Are there any similar brands in the US ala overly stuffed giant chocolate bars? Google searches come up with a bunch of brands but without any consistent reviews online

Apparently spring & mulberry chocolate has a referral program where friend you referred gets $20 off first order and you get 2,000 points. Would someone be so kind to share your referral link so i can use it? Please and thank you

Quick snapshot of bars I've tried over the past few months! (apologies for the interesting collage format I think there's a limit on how many images you can include on a post) Any suggestions on other bars from these makers or just great chocolate you've tried is greatly appreciated! Excited to restock after holding off on a new order in anticipation of the London craft chocolate fair coming up this weekend.

Overall some really fantastic makers and bars, some highlights being:

Paradai Chanthaburi - Incredibly varied fruity notes with a pleasant "boozy" quality that gives vibes of a cider.

Luisa Abram Toncantins - Super tropical bar with little acidity, really complex and one of my favourites for sure (had this one many times, the Rio Jurua is also fantastic).

Aroko Chuao - Great flavour wave here, opens with coffee and a slight nuttiness, opening up to some light red fruits with a unique finish - not usually one to agree with the maker's notes too often but the liquorice they mention feels like a good description of the ending notes.

(HM to the Storm and Bille Nicaragua for a similarly great journey of flavour)

Vigdis Santa Ana - Quite a few bars have notes of berries, but this one might be the bar that embodied that taste the most. Tried a couple of her bars and they're all great, shout-out to the Kiteni bar too.

Lucid - Hard to really pick one they're an amazing maker for all things Peru, each bar is very distinct and has something new to offer. Personal favourite was the Bellavista, the mix of a unique kind of citrus and some woodyness alongside a host of other notes made it a really interesting eat.

Kasama Echague Philippines - Only had this bar from them but really excited to try more, treacle, nuts and malt balanced in a great way! The Bare Bones Phillipines had some similarities, but had more of a tropical fruit note in there too, an amazing bar too that's defo worth a try!

Shout outs to Darkroom and Luisa's Vegan Chocolate for being some fantastic UK based makers too, give both a try if you're able to, very lucky to have such a lively scene for craft chocolate here.

Sto pensando a piccoli omaggi da dare alle signore che vengono ad accompagnare i bambini al laboratorio di cioccolato. Quale vi piace di più?

Hi guys, I recently got this Hershey's Cookies 'N' Creme chocolate as a gift. Today, while eating it, I randomly checked the manufacturing date and noticed that the outer box has different date than the plastic packaging inside. It is suspicious that the packet says the manufacturing date is 26/09/25, whereas the outer box says it was packaged on 22/01/26.

Was I eating expired chocolate? The plastic package did not mention the expiry date, but this seems quite fishy to me now.

I've been getting instagram ads lately for a company called Ora that makes "ceremonial cacao", and it's the first time I've heard the term and poking around online it looks like it's a somewhat dubious label in terms of what it means similar to "natural" and other food labels. It also seems like it's riding the coattails of "ceremonial grade matcha" by just also calling a fancy drink powder "ceremonial" to get people to buy it at a higher price.

That said, it does look interesting. What is it, and what are some reputable sources for buying it? Are the health benefits legit or overstated? I'm a bit wary of buying products to eat from sellers I don't know on the internet. I'd appreciate any information or advice on this!

Found In Walmart

first of all i didn’t even know lindor had chocolate bars, second of all the chocolate itself is so soft and smooth to eat with the pistachio filling, randomly found this at bucees so i bought it out of curiosity, best decision i ever made, 10/10 would recommend 😋

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I buy a bag of semi sweet Ghirardelli chocolate chips, throw them in the microwave and then just dip the cookies

soooooo good and stupid easy. but not gonna lie, I get really sick of them after eating so many lol

After dinner at Azul Historico, I was too full for a regular dessert. But I wanted chocolate. They do a chocolate beverage with a choice of the 4 chocolates above, OR all 4 combined! Being the dilletante that I am, I chose all 4 - the chef's special.

The server boils water and warms a large ceramic cup. Then he added 4 HEAPING tablespoons of the mix into this wooden mortar, added boiling water and used this wooden pestle with ridges to mix it. He then emptied the ceramic cup of water, poured in the chocolate drink and presented it.

It had strong floral notes, and the chocolate was deep and layered, only slightly sweet. It was transformative. 🫠😍. (I'll try to post the video of the mixing in the comments).

Favorites once in a blue moon treat

The store I'm thinking of was right across the street from FOA Schwartz and right next to Blondie's Pizza. Remember that store? I haven't been to SF in so long so I have no idea if the store is even still there. But remember those glorious truffles they sold at the register???

Do they still sell them anywhere??? I dream of having another Grand Marnier Truffle or an Espresso Truffle... I've never found them on any of the websites.