Right, well, another week’s passed and again I’ve completely failed at writing up the blog properly… I really need to get properly back into the habit. The week’s had its ups and downs and there’s really quite a bit of news, still nothing on the shop sadly and I’ll be going back to Brick Lane on Thursday to try again, but more on the decorationy type stuff since I’ve now found a nice place where I can buy used scaffolding planks to make into lovely things – the only problem being that the depot is out in Essex and for them to deliver I’d really have to order a few hundred planks or so for them to deliver… a scary thought. However I spent a lot of last Saturday with a chest of drawers tied to my back on a merry trip back from Cambridge to London, so I reckon that a few planks or so won’t kill me. It’s all good practice for when my career in chocolate collapses and I have to make a hard living selling my services as a porter in the rough mountains of South America.

I’ve had a bit of success with the council and I think I’ve finally got a contact in there who knows what he’s talking about and sounds lovely and sane and knowledgeable and everything else I’ve been hoping for… except that he’s on holiday at the moment. There had to be some catch somewhere, didn’t there. Sadly the regulations he directed me to (despite being the right ones for the first time ever) seem to be rather inpenetrable and largely off topic for big big chunks of the document. Luckily I’ve got John to help me through what the regulations actually require me to do rather than having to refer to the seemingly endless stream of articles and regulations that the general documents refer you to.

Is it just me that finds it strange that there’s no comprehensive handy document that handles what you need to do to set up your kitchen in accordance with the government safety regulations? (That’s the rant for the week… I’m sure you can guess what the rest of it would have been. It would be dull to say the least and I’m sure I’d work myself up into some sort of semi-righteous torrent and then look back and regret what a lot of crap I just spouted.)

Much more importantly (as far as news goes) I’ve had a good go at making some new chocolate bars and I think I can call them a success – as would Dawn, Gary, Frankie and Aaron. Expect delicious roast dinner and wonderous Eastern European bread flavoured chocolate bars finding themselves to a chocolate shop near you! I thought I’d have a lot more trouble tempering the chocolate for moulding and so just made some extra for dipping and moulded that to see how it would turn out… and it came out really well. Sadly the moulds (ehem… tupperware) were a little bit dirty and not sprayed with cocoa butter and had bumps and rough patches on them anyway so the chocolate only turned out dazzlingly shiny in patches rather than a uniform gorgeous colour, but the bars had really nice snap and didn’t melt in the hand or anything so that all sounds good to me. Plus the bits that weren’t dirty from the mould or on a rough bit of the tupperware were great, you could almost see you reflection in them… as soon as I get a whole bar like that I’ll post a picture, though it might just be a whole lot of reflected flash.

For this week’s fun thing point your browsers at this site and marvel at her cakes.