Chocolate Heaven Comes to Princes Street

Yellow balloons heralded the opening of Thornton’s latest concept store on Princes Street yesterday, making Wednesday 29th October the day a little bit of chocolate heaven arrived in Edinburgh.

Or chocolate theatre, as manager Liz Banks explains.

“The difference between this store and our others is the interactive theatre we can present and Princes Street is the perfect location.” Edinburgh is one of just 5 such stores in the UK and the first north of the border, to have a chocolatier on hand, to hand finish and personalise chocolates and to demonstrate wonderful ways with chocolate.

Certainly crowds thronged the store to watch Thornton’s chocolatier Ross Sneddon at work. Originally from West Lothian, Ross trained in the UK and America before returning to Edinburgh as head pastry chef at the Balmoral Hotel’s Number One restaurant, where he won an acorn award. Ross is now based at Thornton’s head office in Derby, where he has been involved in working alongside Keith Hurdman to develop the delectable Fusions range, but he was delighted to return to Edinburgh for this flying visit.

Advent calendars, always popular at this time of year, can be personalised instore and a chocolate fountain is available for you to dip marshmallows, strawberries and fudge.

Manager Liz Banks is the chocolatier you will normally see in the Edinburgh store, where you can now purchase seasonal delights as well as old favourites, such as toffees, chocolate blocks and ice cream. Flavours range from simple milk, white and dark chocolate to exotic orange and cardamon, balsamic and chinese ginger.

For a company which has been going since 1911, Thorntons is bang up to date with a finger on the pulse of modern concerns. Children’s products have no artificial colours or artificial preservatives and Fair Trade chocolate is available both instore and online.

But isn’t all this chocolate dangerous for today’s obese children? “Obesity doesn’t just come from eating chocolate,” says Liz. “A whole lot of other factors come into it and they learn about healthy eating at school. I have never stopped my daughter from having chocolate, and she isn’t obese.”

Liz’s own favourite is chocolat riche, a milk chocolate truffle. “It was discontinued for a while,” Liz says, but a lot of people got up a petition to bring it back, and they did.”

Chocolate truffles, gift boxes of luxury Fusion chocolates and a range of toffees and ice creams are available from the store at 99 Princes Street with the online store offering armchair shopping (except for the ice cream!) and hampers for anyone further afield.