This is the coffin it will be laid to rest in.

Yes, that’s Philadelphia cheese with Cadbury chocolate. In the same tub.

But it’s not the product itself that symbolises the final, inevitable death of Cadbury, it’s what it stands for. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Cadbury wasn’t just the nation’s best loved chocolate maker, it was a model for the manufacturing industry, providing the community with jobs, housing and recreation.

Today, it’s reduced to becoming little more than a logo to be plastered on other products made by Kraft, the multinational food conglomerate that bought the company just two years ago. This is the product we all joked would happen when Kraft first bid for Cadbury. And now it’s real.

“But wait!”, you may cry. “Chocolate flavoured cheese!? Cheese flavoured chocolate!? That’s innovative and exciting!”

Alas, this exciting new product launched which is officially launched on Monday seems to be little more than a repackaged and tweaked version of Philadelphia With Milka – something that’s been sold on the continent for a while. That product – little more than normal Philadelphia cheese with cocoa powder is almost exactly the same stuff as this with a slightly different label.

Now of course I can’t claim to be the biggest Cadbury fan in the world. In six years of writing about chocolate, my tastes have changed significantly and the UK fine chocolate industry has exploded. Couple that with Cadbury’s insistence on you using environmentally destructive palm oil in place of cocoa butter in their chocolate, and I’d rather get my chocolate fix elsewhere.

I’m told from those that have tried it that this product doesn’t actually taste that bad. But that’s not really the point. It just saddens me to see a great British institution reduced to being a sticker on someone else’s cheese spread – I wonder if anything in this product has been anywhere near a Cadbury factory.

It’s only a matter of time before we see Green & Black’s chocolate with Dairylea. Mark my words.

Our favourite chocolatey dessert company, Gü, is currently undergoing a bit of a relaunch. Last week, we were invited along to a fun event in a gallery near Leicester Square. Gü Desserts had taken over the gallery and furnished it with tempting objects, all designed to fit in with their new “Give in to Gü” TV ad campaign.

I have to say, I really like this approach. The idea of simple temptations is in complete contrast to the over the top indulgences we’ve seen recently.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRfS8ZkZXGc

Aside from the chocolatey nibbles and cocktails (some of which we’d seen before!), there were dominoes on the floor begging to be kicked over, bowls filled with bubble-wrap, and in the centre of a the room, a Gü drumkit, which a few brave souls had a go on.

But Gü have decided to take the drums theme up a notch, and for on Wednesday May 25th, for one day only, they’re turning a billboard into a giant drumkit in Tottenham Court Road in Central London. Anyone can come along and have a go, and there’s apparently a chance to win a £200 Virgin Experience Days voucher for your efforts!

We’re going to try to get there and if you want to come along too, it all takes place at the poster site on Grafton Way, opposite 145 Tottenham Court Rd, London W1T 7NE.

Update: Gu sent us some pictures of the drums being drummed. Looks like fun!

A few weeks ago, I was invited to the re-launch of Magnum Ecuador. The chocolate covered ice cream has been around a while, but the chocolate is now Rainforest Alliance certified, and Magnum have been making a big deal about using real, ethically sourced chocolate. All good stuff.

And then they sent us the press release for the monstrosity above. For some inexplicable reason they got together with Karl Lagerfeld and chocolatier Patrick Roger to create a hotel suite made out of 10.5 tonnes of chocolate. Including a very scary looking chocolate man.

Leaving aside the fact that the whole thing looks like something out of a bad horror film, this is an extraordinary waste that completely undermines any argument that Unilever (producers of Magnum) are in any way interested in promoting real, sustainable chocolate production.

Perhaps I’m being overly grumpy, but this in my opinion, sums up everything that’s wrong with mass produced chocolate. When cocoa farmers of the world struggle to get by, this kind of over-the-top wasteful indulgence makes my heart sink.

I’ve no idea how much it cost, but I do know the money would have been better spent being invested in the cocoa farming communities and co-operatives that work so hard for so little reward.

We’ve taken on the not inconsiderable task of finding, cataloguing and mapping every chocolate shop and patisserie in the world. More importantly, wherever possible we’ll be visiting these shops for ourselves, taking photos and giving our opinions.

But we’re going to be relying on readers – chocolate lovers like you – for much of the content on the site. You can leave comments on your favourite (or least favourite!) shops and rate them out of ten. The best shops will then appear in our Top Rated section. And if we’ve missed a shop that you think we should know about, then we want to hear about it.

As well as talking about the shops themselves, we’re also featuring the people behind them and the brands of chocolate they sell. Our unique search feature means that you can search the globe for your favourite chocolate, and have the results displayed on an interactive map.

We’ve got lots more features in the pipeline, but the 200 or so shops we’re launching the site with should be enough to start you out. We’d love to know what you think.

Click the image to view full size or you can read the article on the paper’s web site. Oh, and if you’re interested, you can read Kath’s original Creme Egg Love Story too.

Luckily, I was informed of this fact in a press release from Emily’s Chocolates, or it would have passed me by altogether.

But if there’s one thing that annoys me, it’s pointless “… Days” dreamt up by people who either have too much time on their hands or just want to promote something. Even if this particular day weren’t simply a poor attempt to get people to buy chocolate, I’m not convinced that “chocolate covered anything” is necessarily a good thing.

To demonstrate my point, I decided to cover the first thing that came to hand in delicious milk chocolate and see if it made it more tasty…

The result of this experiment was one irretrievably damaged 500Gb hard drive, one broken tooth, and a lot of wasted chocolate. Not what I had hoped for.

Oh well. It’s a good job that tomorrow is “International Buy Dom A New Hard Drive and Pay For Emergency Dental Work Day”, or I’d be in serious trouble.

Apparently, the tower was built for a Christmas food festival in the town of Macerata Feltria and is scheduled to be chopped up and fed to the public right about…… now.

(Oh, and yes, I know Big Ben is the bell. But it’s so much easier to type than “Palace of Westminster Clock Tower”. So there.)

Image from Reuters / Metro.co.uk

Back in November, Chocablog reader Nada Wilson asked for a place to get in touch with other chocolate lovers around the world to swap chocolate.

Well I’m pleased to say, you can now do that right here on Chocablog thanks to our new forums!

The Chocablog Forums are a place to discuss anything chocolate related, from childhood chocolate memories to sharing recipes. And of course, we’ve set up a special “Chocolate Exchange” where you can get in touch with people all round the world and swap chocs.

So what are you waiting for? Come and join us!

It seems that just about every time we post a news article on Chocablog, it has something to do with a Cadbury product recall.

This time, it’s not Cadbury’s fault, but the Chinese contaminated milk scandal has apparently affected products sold in Taiwan, Hong Kong and (somewhat bizarrely) Australia.

The Times and The Guardian are reporting that Cadbury have withdrawn 11 products after tests have raised concerns.

Of course, the really worrying thing here is that these large companies don’t really seem to know where the ingredients in their products have come from. That makes it almost impossible for consumers to decide what’s safe. And when it comes to a luxury product like chocolate, if people can’t tell where it has come from, they will simply stop buying.

The fruit is first freeze dried, the water is removed and chocolate is “infused” into the gaps left behind.

Scientists at Fresh Functional Food Composite, the company behind this innovation originally developed the technology for industrial use. Figures.

Personally, I can’t say I’m entirely convinced. After all, it was “scientists” who came up with the idea of non-melting chocolate a while back… ’nuff said