A smack in the kisser with Hotel Chocolat

Will I do a product review?

Reader, I wrestled with my soul.

My soul wasn't up to it. I tried to bash the stupid soul around a bit, but it curled up all quiet and non-confrontational, then looked at me with its familiar expression of miserable resignation. It just wanted to be left alone.

I write back to Hotel Chocolat and let them decide.

I say, Are you sure you want me to review your chocolates? You should know my excellent advertising skills had me threatened with court action and that was after the ad agency asked me to clear my desk. And what is that name you've given to a box of chocolates? Sleeksters? WTF is that for a name on a praline fancy?

The PR lady says she couldn't give a toss, take them or leave them.

Maybe she didn't quite express it like that, but she conveyed a quiet confidence that I would adore her box of funny-name Sleeksters, which impressed me.

A package arrives promptly. Chocolates! By post! I immediately resolve to send chocolates by post myself, because it seems a very chi chi thing to do, and the sort of glamourous thing we ladies who lunch like to do. Chocolates like these are, apparently, designed to slip through your letter box on your special day! Well, nothing comes through our letter box ever since I positioned a chest of drawers in front of it. Postee has to knock. He checks the address several times before handing it over when I say the parcel is chocolates and it is for me. He looks doubtful. He probably thinks it is a replacement set of Tupperware lids.

I decide to have a ceremony about this upscale moment. I mean, it's not every day Hotel Chocolat posts me choccies. I place the package ceremoniously on my most classy nylon and polyester fur cushion cover.

But I think I need to sex it up a bit. If I am to be the type of upmarket lady who sends and receives chocolates by post yah, then brown cardboard isn't quite the presentational statement I want my chi chi Hotel Chocolat choccies to make! I think I should dangle my stocking over it.

I haven't got a stocking. I found a pop sock instead.

 
Then I do what we ladies do and make space for myself, by brewing a fine cup of coffee for my very finest tableware, and locking the door.

Time to open the parcel!

Oh wowowowow. At that point, right there, with all the little cards spilling out over the lovely black shiny parcel with the quirky cartoons I am instantly converted to the thrill of receiving a whole box of amazingly dainty chocolates by post. I think Sleeksters is an excellent name, even if it does sound like a brand of roller skates and even if the brown box was a bit underwhelming.

Let's go!

Five seconds later...

Yes! I have completely reviewed this dark selection of Sleeksters! They were delicious! Bravo Hotel Chocolat!

Um, I suppose you want tasting notes?

Er. I am sure I began observing buttery texture and firm shell balanced with silky caramel and delicate aroma with a smooth, lingering aftertaste. I think I sat on my tasting sheet by accident somewhere about the chili confection.

Which, incidentally, needed more chili to punch me properly in the mouth. And the sour cherry. I want the sour cherry to bite me back with its astringent deliciousness. More intensity needed on your cherry, and all the flavours where we upmarket chocolate ladies reach for our extremities. Make your dark, dark, and your light, light. That's what the art teacher told me, and it serves me good as a general rule of life, so you could apply it to your chocolate mixtures.

But the soft fudgy and truffly confections? Deliciously textured. Like licking a painting of a cloud. The champagne smoothie thing, beauteous. And the soft caramel thingys that look like bosoms? I want to live in their melty wondrousness forever.

Dear Hotel Chocolat. If you would like me to review, say another 500 boxes or so of your chocolates by post, just to check them out for palm oil and ethics and stuff, you know where I live. xx

Sleeksters! Possibly one of the bestest presents I could ever imagine receiving through the post, and even beats the Tupperware lids. My soul agrees with me. Send them to all your friends, now.