Giving Up Chocolate... Again!

I'm someone who has a major sweet tooth. My Great Nan used to give me 50p to buy a treat from the shop when I was little and pretty much most of the time I'd buy as many Freddos I could. Although I'm not as bad now, aside from the fact that Freddos are a ripoff, I do tend to look for something sweet to have after tea. I go to my Nan's house and she offers me a chocolate digestive, I have dessert in a restaurant and I'll have something chocolate based, or be snuggling up with a blanket and enjoying a hot chocolate. It seems to be everywhere and sometimes your body really needs a break from it all. 

Two years ago I gave it up for Dechox and here I am doing it again. This time I've roped Andy in to do it as well. It's not just chocolate you give up during the month of March, but anything with cocoa in which can be pretty at hard at times. The challenge is to make it through the whole month while raising money for The British Heart Foundation, and together our goal is to hit £300. I really hope we can hit or even surpass our goal, and you can donate via the website or via text. To text donate send a message "ASLH50" then the amount so £1, £2, £3, £4, £5 or £10 to the number 70070.

It's going to be a tough challenge but I'm ready to take it on and push through. I did it in 2016 and I felt so empowered knowing that for a whole month I can give up something I love and donate to charity for it. Every time I raise money for charity I donate myself too. After the month is up I might just have to indulge in some chocolate brownies to celebrate. Please click the button below and sponsor me even if it's £1, after all it's cheaper than a hot chocolate!

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Lily O'Brien's Chocolate Bars

I've always been a huge lover of chocolate, and when Lily O'Brien's asked if I wanted to review some of their chocolate bars, it was a straight yes.  I received a selection of their 80g bars (£2.00 each)* that come in six different flavours including Salted Caramel which sounds like it would be beautiful. The flavours I have been trying out are Orange & Bergamot Ganache, Peppermint Crunch, Dulce de Leche, Caramel Crunch and Malted Chocolate Crunch. Some of the bars come in both Milk and Dark chocolate which should suit everyone's chocolate needs.

The Orange & Bergamot Ganache was one of the flavours that I wasn't sure what to expect. Orange and bergamot are well known to be a match made in heaven but I'd never tried it with chocolate. Once you snap a piece of the chocolate the smooth ganache filling oozes out, tasting of fragrant orange with a citrus twist of bergamot and it left me wanting more. I've never been a huge fan of fruit mixed with chocolate and would usually pick up something different but I would most definitely pick this up. This flavour even won a Great Taste Award!

The Dulce de Leche bar was another interesting bar as it's made with marbled dark chocolate that is rippled with caramel infused white chocolate. It's one of the bars I wish I had taken a separate photo of but in all honesty it was the first one I wanted to try and my stomach got the better of me as I had a feeling it was going to be the most creamy bar, and boy was I right. I knew exactly what to expect when trying the Malted Chocolate Crunch as it reminded me of Maltesers which are a household favourite. The milk chocolate melted quickly as the pieces aren't too thick, leaving you with sweet and crispy malt pieces.

The Caramel Crunch bar was another flavour that I knew would go down well. It's described as an intensely cream milk chocolate bar that surrenders to a savoury-sweet burst of golden caramel crunch scattered with Atlantic salt crystals. This almost sounds like the pieces of caramel and salt would be huge but they're quite fine which I preferred. Inside the bar was just the right about of caramel crunch and would happily buy a huge box of these bars! Finally, Peppermint Crunch is a dark chocolate bar filled with a burst of refreshing peppermint crisp with a twist of fragrant basil. Dare I say it but I think I preferred this over After Eights! I've always liked dark chocolate more than others around me but wouldn't rush to pick it up, but anything with peppermint is definitely up there with milk and caramel. It was certainly refreshing and would be a great treat to have in the Autumn and Winter.
Along with chocolate bars, Lily O'Brien's have also got boxes and gifts on their website and even do chocolates that you can personalise for a wedding. You can pick up the bars online or at your local Asda store and I'd encourage you to try them for yourself to see how delicious they are.

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A Sweet Gift for Valentine's Day

I know it's still two weeks (today) until Valentine's Day, but I wanted to show you this Yucoco chocolate bar. I personalised it online, and ordered it to my door. It arrived in 2 days in protective packaging to make sure it still in perfect condition when it got to my flat.

The inside of the box reads: To Andy Created by Laura This bar has been designed especially for Yu! Your bar is made of this delicious chocolate & toppings: Terrific Trio Chocolate Homemade Rocky Road Caramel Blossom Chocolate Fudge Homemade Cookie Crumbs Confetti Hearts
I absolutely love the idea of personalising your own bar, at an affordable price that tastes just as gorgeous as it sounds. The Yucoco bar* has four types of chocolate bar to choose from, with over 1 billion combinations. ONE BILLION. I would volunteer myself to try them all, of course. Firstly, I chose a mix of milk, white and dark chocolate. Andy is a huge chocolate lover and thought he would love the idea of having even more flavours on his bar. I then went for things he eats when he is being naughty, rocky road, chocolate fudge and cookies! I thought the caramel blossom and confetti hearts gave it the whole Valentine's look about it. Yes, I'm soppy. 
The bars start off from £4.00 for a plain slab which is pretty standard for this sized chocolate bar. Toppings are between 40p and £1.50. I chose 5 toppings which brought the total to £7.50 for the personalised bar. I could have gone ridiculously soppy and included purely 'love-ly' toppings, such as the 'I love yu' plaque, love hearts, I love you chocolate and chocolate lips, but since Andy is a huge love of more handmade chocolate, I chose his favourite.
If I was making a bar for myself, I would pick the trio of chocolate, salted caramel, milk chocolate drizzle, rocky road, caramel blossom and chocolate flakes! This would be £7.80. I wish I had put chocolate drizzle on Andy's, it looks amazing. I was pleasantly surprise to see you could fruit, nuts (which I also love) and mad things like wasabi peas. The addition of glitter is another great feature, but I didn't think Andy would forgive me for substituting chocolate for some sparkles.
Once ordering, it will be delivered within 3-5 days, although mine arrived in 2 days which was great, meaning if you forget (how could you?) about Valentine's Day, you can save yourself with ordering a bar a few days before. If you don't have the willpower to look through all the toppings, you buy a pre-made bar too. If you're really forgetful, you can pay £1.75 to have a handwritten gift card posted to you. As much as I'd love to spend my time rifling through cards to pick out the perfect one, wandering in to chocolate shops to taste samples and choose from them, in modern day life, we don't tend to have such a luxury as often. 
The bars are 140 grams in weight, which you couldn't eat in one sitting, well I couldn't but I'm sure Andy would have given it a good go. He chose to share his, and was sitting looking at it for days before I gave in and let him eat it more than two weeks before V-Day. Who am I to deprive him of chocolate? 
You can make your own bar at Yucoco.com and they also have instagram, twitter and facebook!

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Winter Hot Chocolates - Gü

Hey Guys,

Happy Blogmas!

Bit of a random post but I bought these in Waitrose in October and November and instantly fell in love, so just wanted to write a little post about them! You've probably heard of Gü, and they make lovely desserts. As I was wandering through an aisle I saw these and picked up the Salted Caramel Flavour Hot Chocolate and took it home to try. It was the right balance between the salted caramel and chocolate. It was thick (almost like flavoured milk) and incredibly easy to make. The next month I picked up the plain Hot Chocolate version.

I served them differently here, but just wanted to emphasize how lovely they look! These tall milkshake glasses were £1 each from Poundland, and the huge mug (this picture doesn't do it justice on how large it is) was £8 from Marks & Spencer's.
I added some light squirty cream and some mini marshmallows. It makes a huge difference using the Gü hot chocolates compared to getting a powder and mixing it into milk. The texture is so smooth and you can drink them cold if you'd like. You can also add a dash of Disaronno to plain hot chocolate for a marzipan tasting drink.
Let me know in the comments what your fave hot chocolate is, I'd love to do another post on winter drinks!
Don't forget to enter my Christmas Giveaway! (here) 

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York: Anniversary Trip Away!

Hey lovelies, it's been a while! Apologies for late posting but I went away with my boyfriend for our 1 year Anniversary in York!

Just want to put it out there that he is absolutely amazing (be jel) and I was so lucky to be able to go on this trip with him. We did so many things but I never took pictures of everything as I wanted to spend some quality time with him.

Anyway, here are some snaps of things we did:

 

Andy relaxing in the National Rail Museum

 A 'Hogwarts Castle' train! Clearly I was quite surprised to see this...

 Our room in the Travellodge. We did have some issues - they moved us to a different hotel and it wasn't ideal as I still haven't been 100% with walking, so they paid four our taxi and gave us complimentary breakfasts for the next day, with the catch that we had to walk back to the original hotel to receive them... We resolved the issue a few days later over email.

 

We went the Chocolate Story where we learnt about the history of Rowntrees and other big brands! Our favourite bit (obviously)  was where we got to make our own chocolate bars to take back with us. Andy had strawberry and chocolate swirls with smarties, and I went for just the swirls. It was so nice!

We also received chocolate tasters as we went around the tour, such as dark chocolate from when chocolate was first produced here, original chocolate which was like a really bitter but watery chocolate milk, quality street chocolate and a slab of dark chocolate.

 

 Cheeky anniversary picture! You can't tell as much from this picture, but Andy is 6ft 4" and I am 5ft 4" so there is a bit of height difference! This was before dinner.

 

Strawberry Daiquri in Jamie's Italian. Andy had never been before and said he had the most amazing steak and chips with coleslaw (so check it out) and I had my usual bolognaise. We are also Gold Club members so we received a little taster too!

 

Clifford's Tower which remains from the original York Castle.

 

Yes I got excited by the huge teddy bear and the Panda teddies inside! This was closed by the time we got there though (sob!) but they have a really cute tea room upstairs!

 

York Minster (a Cathedral)

 

Wasn't that hungry for lunch but had a sweet tooth...

 

Views from the YorkBoat tour.

We also visited:

York Dungeons

York Sightseeing Bus

Jorvik (Viking Centre)

We also did a little bit of shopping and Andy bought me the cutest little plaque for our new flat from Paperchase (here) as a little anniversary present.

Aside from the hotel annoyance, the trip was amazing and I'm so glad we got to escape from revision and uni work for 2 days and spend some more time together!

We are looking at going on another trip soon, so if you have any suggestions please feel free to let me know!

Laura

xxx

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