January 2012

Firstly, Happy New Year, The Chocolate Tree team would like to extend their thanks to everyone who supported us in 2011, it was such a busy year! We hope all those chocolates for Christmas were well received and enjoyed, we certainly had a blast making them. Our kitchen teams creative and technical abilities have really accelerated, and we have seen some great new products being released. Thank you for all your suggestions, we have a long ‘to do’ list, but we hope to give everything (well, almost everything) a go in due course. Chocolate is such a wonderful vessel for so many other ingredients, we are never short of inspiration.

This year coming could see some fantastic new steps for us, although we wish to remain small and artisanal in our approach, our aim is to expand our production premises to allow room for some new specialist equipment. ‘Bean to bar’ production could take us to the leading edge of high-end chocolate, giving us the opportunity to make our chocolate exactly the way we want it using the finest ethically traded ingredients. Very few producers of chocolate in the UK are actually making their chocolate from bean, but there is an uprising in bean to bar producers which we believe will continue to flourish alongside the growth of the market for real chocolate in the UK.

In other news we are busy with some wonderful products for this years burns night, and of course Valentines day 2012. For this years burns supper we have gone all out Scottish and have made chocolate haggis, ‘Iron Brew’ chocolates, whisky chocolates and in a new collaboration with the Caledonian Bewery we have some fantastic 80 /- beer chocolates! For Valentines day this year we have a wide range of chocolate hearts, including our new filled hearts, made with Salted Caramel, Rose & Champagne, or Raspberry & Ginger centres. We also do some great chocolate high heels, or valentines messages in chocolate, alongside our classic range of produce there is something for everyone. Come by and see us at 123 Bruntsfield Place, open 7 days, or at the farmers markets, or search us out at one of our many stockists across the UK.

We are saying our fond farewells to Laurie at Bruntsfield this month, she has done us a marvellous job as manager and we wish her well for the new ventures ahead in Amsterdam. We have seen some new staff coming onboard too, and at one point we counted no less than thirteen nationalities working together, so a big welcome to all the new starts. Positions at The Chocolate Tree are much in demand, but if you have something to offer, either in Edinburgh or Haddington, please feel free to hand in a C.V.