HEART LONDON MAGAZINE’S CHRISTMAS GIFT GUIDE – Sweet Treats

Posted by Editor on November 24, 2015 in Food | 1 Comment

It’s Christmas party season, time to forget about your waistline, bite on a delicious chocolate or two and enjoy your favourite tipple.  Chocolates and tipples also make perfect Christmas presents, so we forgot about our waistlines so we could try chocolates and a few drinks for you, so we could only recommend the best.  We also have created a Christmas Gift Guide for him and for her, so you won’t be lost wondering what gifts to buy this year.

SWEET TREATS

Cadbury Dairy Milk

Cadburys is one of the nations favourite chocolate; the milk chocolate melts in your mouth and the prices are reasonable.  This year they have created some fun Christmas delights which are perfect for stocking fillers or to pop under the tree.

Cadbury Dairy Milk Advent Calendar, £5, ebay

This beautiful calendar has a cheery Santa smiling right back at you and from December 1^st you can open each little door with excitement and taste the delicious milk chocolate. This lovely gift is great for all ages and helps you get in the Christmas mood.

 

Cadbury Dairy Milk Snowman, £0.65

Shaped as a cute snowman complete with scarf and Santa hat, this sweet treat both looks and tastes good. Smooth milk chocolate coats a rich and creamy aerated chocolate mouse in the centre, and in a small packet, this is ideal as a stocking filler for all generations!

 

 

Cadbury Dairy Milk Winter Edition, £1.42

This special winter edition of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk is a fun and delicious treat and looks fantastic with white and milk chocolate trees fitted together like a jigsaw. You can break the blocks of chocolate off easily into rows or individuals. The taste is creamy as expected from Cadbury, but the white chocolate adds that extra decadence.

 

Cadbury Dairy Milk Freddo and Freddo Faces, £1.50

An old Cadbury favourite, Freddo is a familiar treat for a wide range of ages and he’s back now with included popping candy. This extra kick to already tasty milk chocolate means that Freddo will be remaining a firm favourite for years to come. He’s also perfectly sized as a stocking filler! A variation on the classic Freddo are Freddo Faces – a box of individually packaged bags, each containing a generous amount of milk chocolate Freddo faces.

 

Cadbury Dairy Milk Santa, £2

An essential at this time of year, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Santa is a cute gift to give to any chocolate lover. Wrapped in colourful foil, this purple Santa is hollow so as to not be too heavy but just as delicious as you’d expect.

 

Cadbury Dairy Milk Snow Bites Gift Bauble, £4

Presented in a beautiful bauble, which you can hang on your tree, inside lies beautifully creamy milk chocolate in a crispy chocolate shell, dusted with icing sugar. It’s the perfect sweet Christmas treat.

 

Godiva Christmas Collection, £27.25, available at godivachocolates.co.uk

Known as a luxury brand of chocolate, Godiva continues to prove their fantastic quality with their 20 piece gift box. If you’re looking for a lovely gift or just a treat for yourself, these rich and exceptional chocolates are ideal. With two limited edition seasonal pieces (milk Almond and Dark Sea Salt), each chocolate is to be savoured.

Monty Bojangles, £5

With their Flutterscotch Truffles, Monty Bojangles has created something truly special. The box is beautifully presented and the number of truffles, generous. Melt in your mouth smooth chocolate with a carefully coco dusted exterior leaves you wanting more and more! The chocolate is not too sweet to be sickly but is creamy and complemented perfectly with crunchy pieces of butterscotch. Pure delight and a perfect gift for chocolate lovers everywhere.

 

Choc on Choc Christmas Range, available at choconchoc.co.uk 

The fabulous Choc On Choc create unique chocolates perfect as gifts all year round – but especially at this time of year. Their Christmas range uses Milk, white and dark chocolate and a number of innovative designs to ensure you find something special for your loved ones.

The London Melt & Make Kit (£12.99) is a fantastic gift for kids allowing them to melt down delicious chocolate buttons, which then get poured into a mould. After leaving the chocolate to harden, they can then pop out the pieces and build their very own London complete with Big Ben and London Buses!

Their Christmas Pudding (£8.99) is another fun, innovative gift idea, handmade from milk and while Belgian chocolate. This decadent hollow Christmas pudding hides a giant white chocolate sixpence inside, and is ideal for anyone less than keen on the real thing.

In a similar vein, the Choc On Choc Igloo (£8.99) is made from creamy white chocolate and houses cute little chocolate penguins inside! Another fun and original addition to the Christmas range and great gift material.

Last but not least from Choc On Choc is their Father Christmas Bar (£4.00) – a wonderful stocking-filler sized milk chocolate bar decorated with a cheerful Santa on top. With handmade Belgian chocolate, it won’t just put you in the Christmas mood but will also prove a treat for your taste buds.

 

Tsuki Mochi, £4.50, available at Selfridges

The divine Tsuki Mochi have created incredible chocolate mocha truffles which come beautifully presented. However, it’s once you take them out of the box when the treat truly begins. With a cocoa powder dusting, it’s almost like biting into creamy chocolate ice cream only without the chill. Smooth and decadent, we can’t recommend these enough as a welcome difference to the usual chocolate gift.

 

Doisy & Dam, £1.75 to £3.50, available doisyanddam.com

Doisy and Dam chocolate is one of those sumptuous treats that, once it passes your lips, makes you wonder why you don’t treat yourself more often. With these smooth as silk ingots of chocolate, you don’t have to feel as though you’re being any less than good as gold either, with their super food ingredients featuring combinations that will satisfy even the most curious foodies among us, such as ginger, chili flakes and hemp seed and the surprisingly wonderful date and Himalayan pink salt, which is my personal favourite. These will make the perfect gift or stocking filler for someone who is a bit of a food connoisseur and loves to be health conscious too. Made from organic ingredients, the bars’ flavours are as whacky as they are beautiful and feel as though they’ve been put together by a sommelier: coffee and sprouted buckwheat; goji and orange; maca, vanilla and cacao nibs; ginger, chili flakes & hemp seed; roasted cacao nibs, and date and Himalayan pink salt.

 

Chocologic, £1.50, available at Tesco

Chocologic pride themselves in not adding any sugar to their chocolate – perhaps a good idea with all the other overly sweet treats you’re bound to consume over the Christmas period!

Their Milk chocolate with 60% less sugar means you can feel that bit less guilty for indulging this year! The milk chocolate is smooth and pleasantly creamy with plenty of flavour. There is inevitably a slight bitterness due to the lack of sugar, which some chocolate lovers may find hard to get used to, but the texture and richness makes up for it. However, for such a dramatic reduction in sugar, the taste in no way suffers as much as you would expect.

They also have a Hazelnut bar, which is a pleasantly nutty variation. For dark chocolate lovers there is also a great option with their 90% less sugar dark chocolate bar.

 

Coole Swan Truffle Pack, £5, available cooleswan.com

As well as creating a delectable Irish Cream Liqueur, Coole Swan have also carried over their talents into chocolate making, with their Irish cream chocolates. These creamy milk chocolates melt in your mouth with a perfect balance of real Irish Cream Liqueur. In keeping with the Christmas theme, the chocolate is a Christmas tree shaped.

 

Joe & Seph’s popcorn, £4, available joeandsephs.co.uk

These gormet popcorn chefs have come up with two tasty Christmas recipes that are fabulous options as presents and even just to keep around the house to snack on. Their Belgian Chocolate and Orange flavour is crunchy and moreish; a tasty treat perfect for this time of year. With it’s delicious coating of caramel, chocolate and zesty orange, this is one snack that is a sophisticated step up from the usual popcorn flavours. The richness is balanced by the refreshing orange and all you need to do is try and not finish the whole bag in one sitting! They also have a Brandy Infused Fruit and Almonds, which tastes wonderfully like a mince pie. The popcorn is packed with flavour and spice, balanced wonderfully – and with an easy to reseal bag, your popcorn stays fresh for even longer.