something that finally feels like progress!

Things seem to have been going really rather well recently… it’s pretty rocking. (That is, they’ve been going well apart from the blog which I’ve neglected terribly.) I’ve done a fair bit of chocolating with the fabulous Girton Ball, I’ve got a fair bit on the go making prizes for a Streetcar competition and got more than a fair bit going on soon, which I’ll get to in due course… until then you’ll just have to endure my rambling.

The Girton Ball was really great, partly because they paid me lots and lots, partly because they put me in a room next to the cheese people on one side and the whiskey guy on the other, but mostly because everybody liked the chocolate so much. It’s been ages and ages since I’ve given out chocolate to lots of people who’ve never had any before and I’d almost forgotten how shocked people are to hear that I make the chocolate. I guess that doesn’t really say anything good about my professional credibility, but I’d always rather surprise people rather than look like I’m meant to. Perhaps I should take it to an extreme, get myself some random piercings and giant blue liberty spikes and just ruin any confidence people would get in the chocolate from looking at the chef. It sort of reminds me of this amazing bar I went to in Japan which was more or less in the living room of somebody’s house and where the live music started up when the barman suddenly disappeared for ten minutes and then came back dressed in women’s clothing and fired up his hammond organ to play bossa nova jazz. Best bar ever.

But anyway, getting carried away. Probably the best thing (business wise) I got out of the Ball was that it was the first time I’d made a really big load of chocolate all on my own and quite frankly it’s great just to know that I can.

Doesn’t it look pretty? That’s the mix needed to make just about 3000 chocolates. There is a chance I might now have some sort of chocolate shaping RSI, but it was fun.

Right now I’m making 1500 chocolates for Streetcar thanks to JT who’s like scarily important there and has managed to wangle me into the promotions budget for the month…. which brings everything nicely to one of the exciting bits of future news. Naturally Indulgent may be turning from a one man two bit operation into some some sort of high flying company all set to revolutionise the chocolate world in England.

JT and his boss Alex think that the whole chocolate thing I do coud be great to sell to big corporate type people at big corporate type prices with the awesome handmade packaging that I’ve always wanted to have. Moving up from my whole 50p per box packaging budget would be sweet! Making lots and lots of money would be pretty sweet too, but nowhere near as awesome as having handmade paper flowers wrapped around each chocolate which also unfurled to make a little plate to eat them off.

Anyway, that’s something for the future, but for right now I’ve had a reply from Cabbages and Frocks market saying that they’d love for me to rent a stall at their market. Just give me a week or two to sort out the table setup and the labelling requirements and the label printing and the transportation and the storage and finalising the packaging sourcing and the other things that I’ve undoubtedly forgotten and I will be there!