I have always loved cooking, to me it is the perfect creative platform because not only do you have almost unlimited options of what you can make, you can eat what you create! For me, a love of all things chocolate is a given and after a recent trip to India, my curry obsession began.  The idea of bringing curry and chocolate together hadn’t occured to me until I found out that national chocolate week and national curry week overlap, a match made it heaven? That’s for you to decide… This recipe is quick and easy as well as delicious, what’s not to love! The richness of the chocolate is ..read more

Going organic was always something I wanted to do with the company but turns out it’s a bigger deal than I could have ever imagined. I wanted to do it for a number of reasons, firstly it just makes sense to make the company officially organic and it’s a great thing to be able to write on the packaging. I was lucky enough to grow up surrounded by organic and even biodynamic (google it) produce and it’s a no brainer that it’s the best way to eat. I was also getting a bit bored with the long-winded explanation of yes, we use organic base ingredients but no, we can’t say that we are organic becau ..read more

The combination of chocolate and honey has always been one I loved and as the importance of these little pollinators is now much more on every one’s minds, it seemed about time we did our bit to support them! Keen to use only the best quality honey and from bees I knew were cared for, I sought out some local bee keepers to give me the low down on all things bee. The complexity of the social structure and life of bees is incredible and after chatting to Sue and Vince Bray who own Bray’s bees, I learnt the most important thing for me: that well looked after bees produce enough honey to keep them ..read more

One of the first things I wanted to do when I took over Rowdy and Fancy’s was to bring out mini bars and last September I finally managed it! The first challenge was choosing a mould, this sounds simple but in reality took a lot of combined brain power and online research. Do we make actual mini versions of the big ones? How many segments do we want? How mini is mini?  And so on… having decided on a 48g mould with 4 fingers we went on to the next step: packaging.   I will never look at a product in a shop the same way again, the care and thought behind each and every aspect of the p ..read more

My second Easter with Rowdy and Fancy’s meant I had a little more confidence and was better prepared to branch out into new and exciting things, hence my first ever attempt at a hollow figure. Something I get asked a lot as a chocolatier is how hollow figures are made. This was certainly a question I had before I began the chocolate journey and its one that still seems to baffle people. Now, there are a few different ways of doing this and here is the one I use. There is no sticking together of halves or coating a block of ice in chocolate and letting it drain through a hole (seriously it’s be ..read more