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Yawn Brew Hot Chocolate Advent Calendar Review

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Yawn Brew Hot Chocolate Advent Calendar Review Introduction Its that time of year again, a time that's synonymous, for many of us, with chocolate. Its a time when its totally acceptable to stuff your face with as much chocolate as you can physically eat, and a time when many of us give our loved ones a chocolately gift to show our appreciation. Other than Easter, that time is Christmas. Unlike Easter, the weeks before Christmas also provide opportunities for chocolate, albeit often just a bite's worth per day, in the form of advent calendars. I know they are often expensive for what you get, compared to normal chocolate products, but the fun and excitement of opening a little door everyday and wondering what it is you've got that day, just can't be beaten. Advent calendars were always one of the things I looked forward to most as a child, especially the one my mum made and filled with little cadbury chocolates, and I have refused to grow out of them! Fortunately, these ...

Hotel Chocolat Inventing Room - November 2021

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Hotel Chocolat Inventing Room - November 2021 Introduction Welcome to my latest Hotel Chocolat Inventing Room subscription post, where I talk about the latest month's box of brand new chocolate creations and evaluate them, deciding whether they are good enough to be sold in the shops (a key part of the subscription). Starting this month, I'll also be giving each chocolate a red card or green card, based on the approval system employed by Hotel Chocolat where votes are taken on new chocolates to decide whether they're good enough to sell, using these cards (green card means yes, red means no). We are asked to give everything a green or red card during our monthly surveys, so I'll be doing the same here. We are supposed to give a definite answer though but for the purposes of this blog if I really can't decide, I'll just give it an "unsure". This month's box has been particularly exciting as we have seen Hotel Chocolat's new sonic knife created c...

Hotel Chocolat Inventing Room - October 2021

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 Hotel Chocolat Inventing Room - October 2021 Introduction Welcome to my latest Hotel Chocolat Inventing Room subscription post, where I talk about the latest month's box of brand new chocolate creations and evaluate them, deciding whether they are good enough to be sold in the shops (a key part of the subscription). This month sees Japanese flavours galore with items such as matcha batons and yuzu drinking chocolate, while fruity flavours also feature heavily this month. There is also quite a lot of white chocolate again and, as you probably already know by now, I am not too keen on it, so this is somewhat disappointing for me. It does seem like many of this month's recipes are summery recipes that they weren't able to fit in during the summer months, so it does makes sense that we're seeing so many fruity/white chocolates still. I do think its getting a bit repetitive now though and I would've hoped to see more variety by now. Nevertheless, some of the flavours so...

Hotel Chocolat Inventing Room - September 2021

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 Hotel Chocolat Inventing Room - September 2021 Introduction Welcome to my latest Inventing Room post, where I talk about the latest month's box of new creations and evaluate them (a key part of being a member of this subscription). This month follows a similar format to the last two months, with biscuits, macarons and batons all present once more (albeit in different flavours). We have plenty of fruity flavours again this month, such as the lemon shortbread, blackcurrant pavlova and mango and chilli truffle, but autumn has also made an appearance in the form of the crispy cinnamon maracon. We also have a brand new chocolate covered item to try, which is 85% dark chocolate and himalayan salt popcorn. Fortunately for me there is also less white chocolate this time around as last month there was far too much (as you might have already guessed I'm not that keen on it)! On the downside though there is still only three batons, which as I've mentioned before, is in my opinion a m...

Hotel Chocolat Inventing Room - August 2021

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 Hotel Chocolat Inventing Room - August 2021 Introduction Welcome to my latest Inventing Room post, where I talk about this month's box of new creations and evaluate them (a key part of being a member of this subscription). This month, being the third and final month of summer, has brought another box full of summery, fruity creations, such as the white peach ganache and the strawberries and cream macaron. Whilst I do love fruity flavours, I don't particularly like white chocolate so I was quite disappointed to see that around half of the box consisted of white chocolate this month. I understand that some people love white chocolate, but I just think the box should've been better balanced to suit the very varied tastes of the Inventing Room members, especially as white chocolate can be quite divisive (along with dark chocolate). I was also disappointed to see yet again, like last month, only a meagre three batons, which I do not think is enough for an entire element of the ...

Hotel Chocolat Inventing Room - July 2021

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Hotel Chocolat Inventing Room - July 2021 Introduction This month we have the second box of the summer, the July box, with yet more summer inspired recipes for us to try. We have the usual chocolate covered nuts, this time smoked almonds covered in single origin milk chocolate, along with a pistachio caramel cookie, an interesting selection of filled chocolates, and some summery baked good inspired chocolates - lemon drizzle batons and banoffee pie macarons. This month sees some pretty unusual flavours being tested, such as the aforementioned almonds and a sesame praline, so hopefully the inventiveness of the chocolatiers has paid off and they are tasty chocolates. There has been a fairly big and welcome change made with this box, with the number of filled chocolates increasing from eight to twelve, meaning we now have three of each filled chocolate to try, however I have noticed that the rest of the content has been rather light this month, which is really disappointing. For example w...