Hi

We now have an exciting new way to save money at Chocolate Now! :

Earning Points:
Purchasing from our Website - Every time you buy from us, we give you 5 points (worth 5p)
                                                 for each £1 you spend.
Tell Your Friends About Us - When your friends order from us, if they enter your email
                                               during checkout:
                                               They will get 5% off their first order (plus points),
                                               You get 5 points for every £1 they spend on their first order.

To Recommend Us Now: click here to email our details to a friend.

Spending Points:
It's all very simple - the next time you buy from our website, during the checkout process, we will tell you how many points you have, and ask if you want to spend them, save them until later, or just spend some of them. We then recalculate the total payment before asking for your card details.

Learn More about Points Now!

Big Points Give-Away!
We want all our existing customers to start enjoying the benefits of Points Now! straight away, so:

• We have back-dated all points to 1st January 2008. This means that if you have purchased from us this year, we have given you points for those transactions.
• We are giving DOUBLE POINTS on all purchases in January & February 2008
  (this includes back-dated points)
• If you are an existing customer, we have given you 100 BONUS POINTS (worth £1.00) simply for subscribing to our newsletter.

We will be including your current Points Now! balance in each newsletter.
 

Don't forget Mother's Day! - 2nd March (in the UK)
If you haven't already done so, this week is your last chance to place an order for Mother's Day. If you order by 15:00 UK time on:
                     Thu 28th Feb (UK Next Day)
                 or Fri  29th Feb (UK Saturday Guaranteed)

Then we can still get your gift there in time for the day!
You will also get DOUBLE POINTS on any order placed before the end of Feb!

Chocolate Trivia
When making chocolates, it is not enough just to melt the chocolate! Chocolate is a very complex mixture of different ingredients, including several different fats, all of which melt and set at different temperatures. In order to get chocolate to set with a nice gloss, a fine-grained texture, and a satisfying "snap" it must be "tempered". This involves careful control of temperature and can be quite involved - here is a fairly straightforward method that can be used at home:

• First heat the chocolate to 40-45 °C to fully melt all the fats (a bain marie is ideal for doing this at home).
• Then allow it to cool to 34-35 °C for dark chocolate, or 33-34 °C for  milk or white chocolate (a digital cooking thermometer is recommended).
• At this point, add around 1% of ready tempered chocolate - simply adding some (un-melted) chocolate straight from the packet will work, although you can also buy specially prepared cocoa butter from home chocolate making suppliers for this purpose.
• Stir thoughoughly to melt the added chocolate, and allow the mixture to cool slowly to 31-32 °C (dark chocolate) or 29-30 °C (milk & white chocolate).
• You can now check the temper of the chocolate by dipping the tip of a knife into it - if the chocolate hardens quickly to a nice gloss and "snaps" cleanly, it is ready to use. It should be kept at the current temperature and occasionally stirred to maintain it's temper.

Once tempered chocolate is poured, it needs to be cooled quickly or it loses its temper while setting. This is why large chocolate items are always hollow - they would set too slowly if they were solid. The ideal temperature for cooling chocolate is around 10 °C so a fridge (set to a higher than normal temperature) is often used.

Tell us what you think of our service...
We love to hear from our customers, and are always looking for ways to improve our service. If you have any comments or suggestions, just hit the reply button and drop us a line!
   Thanks
     Vicky

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