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The Times and The Guardian are reporting that Cadbury have withdrawn 11 products after tests have raised concerns.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

But after a single ad, Cadbury have killed off this Flake Girl (Cause of death: Drowning. Again.) and decided to replace her with Joss Stone.

Now if you know anything at all about Ms Stone, you’ll probably be banging your head on the table right about now and shouting “WHY!?” very loudly.

I can only think that someone at Cadbury googled the word “flake” and her name came up. That’s the only possible reason I can think of that anyone would hire this annoying woman for such an important role. Yes she can sing – but she’s also the kind of person that makes you ant to throw furniture at the TV every time she talks. This is the girl from Devon who went to California for a week and came back with an American accent.

Now I know it’s just an advert, but Flake ads are about luxury, indulgence and desire. They should not make you want to shoot your television.

Now we don’t often just post other people’s announcements, but I’ve had a quick look around their site and I think it looks fabulous.

I particularly like their “Build-A-Bar” service which lets you build short messages by picking the letters.

I’ve no idea if the chocolate is as good as their web site, but I’ll try to get some samples for review and let you know.

So, you may already have read about the recent incident involving a Thorntons chocolatier and the squashed Hotel Chocolat truffles. Maybe you read it on the BBC site. Maybe you read it in the Independent.

Or maybe you read it on a blog.

But as amusing (and bemusing) as the incident may have been, it seems Hotel Chocolat aren’t quite as keen to “just move on now” as they would have us believe.

You see, far from moving on, their PR company (Immediate Future Ltd) has been emailing bloggers and casually asking them in passing what they think about the whole incident.

In fact, they are quite clearly trying to stir the whole thing up to generate some positive PR in the blogosphere.

Now, here at Chocablog, we’re happy to review Hotel Chocolat’s wonderful chocolates. We don’t even mind helping them to run competitions free of charge. But we draw the line at being manipulated by a PR company to try to make a rival chocolate company look stupid… because if you ask me, that’s even more childish than going round squashing your competitors’ chocolates in the first place.

So apparently, next week is officially Chocolate Week here in the UK.

Now I’m all for chocolate related events, but I’ve never heard of Chocolate Week. It doesn’t appear to be an “international” day, so I have to assume it ranks somewhere between ‘Dom’s Entirely Made Up Day’ and ‘International Talk Like A Pirate Day’.

But I digress. Back to the matter in hand.

In celebration of this highly official and widely recognised week, those wonderful people at Visit London have come up with a Chocoholic’s Weekend – a whole host of chocolatey things to do in London.

I have to admit, there really is some interesting stuff on the list. If you’re a Londoner or just happen to be visiting, there’s bound to be something there for you. The Harrods trip has been on my list for some time, but I appear to have been sidetracked by eating vast quantities of chocolate in the comfort of my own home.

I mean who needs to go out anyway?

Oh – and a quick word to the PR people who send us this stuff: We like to sit at home and eat chocolate. Trying to use us promote stuff that involves any kind of activity probably isn’t going to work out too well.