Melt Chocolates

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05/10/2026

Where does some of the world's most expensive and delicious chocolate begin? 🍫🌿

For us, one answer lies in Peru, where the Amazon meets the Andes and remarkable varieties of cacao have been cultivated for generations.

Among them is Chuncho cacao, renowned for its genetic diversity and complex flavour.

This region sits within the wider story of cacao's ancient South American origins, where archaeological evidence shows humans were using cacao thousands of years ago.

And that diversity matters.

Different cacao genetics, landscapes and generations of cultivation can produce dramatically different aromas and flavours in the finished chocolate.

It's why understanding chocolate means going right back to where the cacao grows.

A huge thank you to for showing us where this incredible Chuncho cacao grows and helping us explore the story behind it. 🌱

And this journey has inspired something new...

Our Inca Chocolate Bar is coming soon. Follow to be the first to know when it's released.

02/10/2026

Milk chocolate has a history that begins long before the chocolate bar. 🍫🥛

In 1655, England invaded Jamaica, then a Spanish colony. During the conflict, enslaved Africans who had been forced to work on the island’s plantations and cattle ranches escaped into the mountains. Many joined the resistance and established free Maroon communities.

These communities used their knowledge of the land and locally available foods to survive and resist colonial forces.

Cacao was one of those foods.

Historical accounts from 17th-century Jamaica describe chocolate being prepared with milk and water, long before Sir Hans Sloane popularised his medicinal chocolate drink in Britain.

The precise origins of milk chocolate are difficult to establish, but the contributions of enslaved Africans and Caribbean communities have too often been overlooked.

For our Chocolate Through Time series, we’ve created a historically inspired recipe called Maroon Mountain Cocoa Milk, using ingredients that would have been available in Jamaica, including cacao, milk, allspice and other local foods.

It’s a reconstruction, not a surviving original recipe, but it helps us explore a history of chocolate shaped by resistance, survival and cultural exchange.

Watch the full video, We Make Milk Chocolate Through Time, on YouTube now. Link in bio.

FoodHistory ChocolateThroughTime MeltChocolates

29/09/2026

For the person dreaming of a chocolate-filled Christmas…

Give them 24 days of fresh artisan chocolates hidden inside Melt’s Alpine-inspired Log Cabin.

Handmade in London, completely plastic-free and named one of BBC Good Food’s Best Advent Calendars of 2025.

A Christmas gift that gives them something to look forward to every single morning.

25/09/2026

Chocolate's greatest enemy isn't heat.

It's water. 💧🍫

You can have a perfectly smooth bowl of melted chocolate, add just a small amount of water and suddenly watch it turn thick and grainy.

Why?

Chocolate contains lots of fat but very little water. When a small amount of water is introduced, it can dissolve some of the sugar on the surface of the particles, causing them to clump together.

The chocolate **seizes**.

And this helps explain one of the problems early chocolate makers faced when trying to create solid milk chocolate.

Fresh milk contains a huge amount of water.

The solution was finding ways to dramatically reduce that moisture, eventually allowing milk and chocolate to be combined into the smooth solid bars we recognise today.

Sometimes understanding chocolate comes down to surprisingly simple chemistry. 🍫

Watch *We Make Milk Chocolate Through Time* on YouTube now. Link in bio.

24/09/2026

What the hell is "milk chocolate flavour"? 🍫

In the US, a product has to meet specific standards before it can legally be labelled milk chocolate.

Under FDA rules, milk chocolate must contain at least 10% chocolate liquor, while products labelled semisweet or bittersweet chocolate must contain at least 35% chocolate liquor.

In the UK, the rules are different. Milk chocolate generally requires at least 25% total cocoa solids, although specific categories have different requirements.

So when you see something described as "milk chocolate flavoured" rather than simply "milk chocolate", it's worth turning the packet over and reading what is actually inside.

Sometimes what looks like chocolate isn't legally chocolate at all.

And that raises a bigger question:

How little cacao can you put into something before it stops being chocolate?

Follow for more chocolate facts, history and slightly obsessive investigations into what we're actually eating. 🍫

23/09/2026

Why can't you just add milk to chocolate? 🥛🍫

It sounds like the simplest recipe imaginable.

Chocolate + milk = milk chocolate.

Except there's a problem.

Ordinary milk contains a lot of water, and melted chocolate really doesn't like water.

Add liquid milk directly and the chocolate can quickly seize, turning from smooth and glossy into a thick, grainy mass.

This is part of what made creating a stable solid milk chocolate such a technical challenge.

The breakthrough was finding ways to dramatically reduce the water content of the milk, with concentrated milk and later milk powder becoming important tools in milk chocolate production.

Sometimes the simplest-looking foods have the most complicated science behind them.

Watch We Make Milk Chocolate Through Time on YouTube now. Link in bio.

21/09/2026

Vanilla and chocolate were paired together long before Europeans ever tasted cacao. 🍫🌿

To recreate an early Mesoamerican chocolate drink, we're grinding cacao by hand into a paste, a physically demanding process that formed the foundation of traditional chocolate preparation.

The paste could then be mixed with water and flavoured with ingredients such as flowers, maize, achiote, chilli or vanilla.

For our version, we're adding fresh vanilla and a small amount of chilli.

Vanilla is native to Mexico, where the Totonac people cultivated it long before European contact. It later became part of the tribute demanded by the Mexica Empire.

So the relationship between cacao and vanilla isn't a modern invention. It's a pairing with centuries of history behind it.

Watch We Make 10 Chocolate Recipes Through Time on YouTube now. Link in bio.

21/09/2026

Why can’t you just add milk to chocolate? 🥛🍫

It sounds like the simplest recipe imaginable.

Chocolate + milk = milk chocolate.

Except there’s a problem.

Ordinary milk contains a lot of water, and melted chocolate really doesn’t like water.

Add liquid milk directly and the chocolate can quickly seize, turning from smooth and glossy into a thick, grainy mass.

This is part of what made creating a stable solid milk chocolate such a technical challenge.

The breakthrough was finding ways to dramatically reduce the water content of the milk, with concentrated milk and later milk powder becoming important tools in milk chocolate production.

Sometimes the simplest-looking foods have the most complicated science behind them.

Watch We Make Milk Chocolate Through Time on YouTube now. Link in bio.

ChocolateThroughTime MeltChocolates

19/09/2026

Is chocolate the most underrated psychoactive food on earth?

Cacao contains 600+ natural compounds, which is part of what makes its effects so unusual. Rather than doing one thing, cacao can influence multiple systems at once, supporting stimulation, relaxation, reward, energy, and circulation simultaneously.

That is why the experience of real cacao can feel so different from ordinary supermarket chocolate. Many mass-market products are dominated by sugar, emulsifiers, and flavourings, with lower cacao content and less of the original complexity intact.

High quality or ceremonial-style cacao retains more of the compounds naturally found in the bean, including theobromine, flavanols, and mood-related molecules that can subtly shift how you feel.

Chocolate is not a drug in the conventional sense, but it is clearly psychoactive. It can alter mood, attention, and bodily state in measurable ways.

The difference is that great cacao tends to do this with balance rather than intensity.

Follow for more stories behind chocolate.

18/09/2026

If it’s called hazelnut spread, shouldn’t it taste primarily of hazelnuts? 🌰🍫

Look at the ingredients in Nutella and the first one isn’t hazelnuts.

It’s sugar.

So we decided to reverse the idea.

Our spread is made with 55% hazelnuts, combined with high-quality chocolate, real vanilla and olive oil.

And when you taste the two side by side, the difference is immediately noticeable.

One is dominated by sweetness.

The other puts the deep, roasted flavour of the hazelnuts at the centre.

Which raises a pretty simple question…

What should a hazelnut spread actually taste like?

🌰 Our 55% Hazelnut Spread is available to buy online now. Shop via the link in our bio.

FineChocolate MeltChocolates

Address

6 Clarendon Road
London
W113AA

Opening Hours

Monday 10am - 6:30pm
Tuesday 10am - 6:30pm
Wednesday 10am - 6:30pm
Thursday 10am - 6:30pm
Friday 10am - 6:30pm
Saturday 10am - 6:30pm
Sunday 11am - 5pm

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