Chocs to inspire you to make your own
I’d become vaguely aware of Brik chocolate from – I think of all places – an architectural magazine. Which is an odd place to find out about chocolate, except when you realise that Brik chocolate ‘bars’ look like 9cm x 9cm terrazzo tiles. As in tiles you put on the floor or the wall. Some are so convincing I actually tricked my partner (coincidentally we’d been talking floor tiles). ‘What do you think of this tile?’ I asked him, showing him a Brik ruby, spirulina and ginger bar before I bit into it.
Some of the tiles are insanely pretty and very creative, and they’d make novel presents (£9.90, brik.site), but I didn’t find one that absolutely grabbed me. What interested me far more from Brik were the domes they do which look like high-shine marble, but are chocolate housing Italian meringue and Danish marzipan bases (£7.90 each). They’re beautiful and would be excellent, easy desserts (not that any of us can entertain at the moment) when you can’t be bothered to make your own. Because they’re messy you can’t really share them, and have to scoff them all by yourself. The cherry, cinnamon and walnut one was superb.
If you fancy making your own chocolates – and I have in the past (my salted caramels rival Paul A Young’s among the lucky few who have tasted them) – Lakeland has some excellent moulds (from £3.99, lakeland.co.uk), and you can make your own bars with your favourite inclusions (I once did kumquats with dark milk), nut butter cups, your very own box of assorted chocolates, or chocolate spoons to stir into hot milk.
