Last week, 20 young people across the youth projects within Leicestershire Cares attended Cocoa Amore, to get creative and explore the art of chocolatery. They were joined and supported by Aimee, Linda, Marie and Suzanne our business member volunteers from Hinckley and Rugby Building society, who not only got stuck in with the creativity but gave our young people a chance to socialise and build relationships in a relaxed and informal setting.
We also have to say a big thankyou to people's Postcode Lottery for our exhibit funding which allowed us to provide this opportunity, it was a great success and the creativity flowed, just like the chocolate!
From the minute I arrived I was made to feel very welcome; I could tell the young people were looking forward to this workshop and to be honest, who wouldn’t after all it is chocolate….
Suzanne HRBS
We began the workshop with a whistle stop tour of the history of chocolate and explored some of the products new to Cocoa Amore that are currently being developed ready to be sold within the store. Next we had a taste test of all the different flavours and chocolates, this provoked much discussion and divide with in the group as to which was their favourite flavour.
Creativity followed when we were finally unleashed on the chocolate making part of the workshop. First a chocolate bar that could be made to our own tastes and likes with add in ingredients such as dried raspberries, jelly sweets, honey comb and marsh mallows to name just a few! Feeling inspired, we moved on to our developing our truffle making skills and during our handfuls of chocolate and cocoa powder we learnt the differences between French and Belgium truffles.
Most of the students were a bit quiet to start with, but as they got further into the session and used to new faces, I felt they really got into the swing of it and started communicating a lot better.
Overall the whole group were fun to work with and once they got over the initial “What are we doing here?” were very engaging & seemed to enjoy themselves.
Marie HRBS
Whilst we waited for our chocolate creations to set in the fridge we enjoyed a delicious hot chocolate and discussed our thoughts on the activity to hand. Everyone had a sense of accomplishment and eagerly anticipated what their makes would turn out like. The workshop was declared a great success by all and everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves.
I really enjoyed making my chocolate bar, I can't wait to eat it! Everyone was really nice and I enjoyed talking to them.
Altogether Now participant