DIY Chocolate Tasting

To send in the mail

I have always been a fan of slow mail.  I send postcards and books to people all the time.  I love finding something unexpected in my mailbox, and I love putting a smile on someone else’s face when they find something that is not a bill in their mailbox.

With that in mind, during these isolated COVID times I threw together a few chocolate tastings to send some joy in the mail.

I sent out four packages to friends who I thought could use a pick me up.

Here is a list of what I used: 5 chocolate bars, foil, scissors, tape, pen, paper & envelopes.

I chose some chocolate bars to share.  Really, I used about half of each bar, and I was making tastings for about 10 people, in four different portions.  One was a family of five, so there was a bit more chocolate in their portion.  One was for my mom, just one person, so that portion was smaller. 

I precut foil.  I cut foil for each of the portions I was doing.  So that was four pieces of foil for each bar.  I did this all at once to make it go faster.  You can easily do it as you go if you prefer.

Then I broke up the chocolate bars into portions needed for each package and laid them out on the foil pieces.  I did this with all the chocolate.  Being sure to keep them in order.  You can see in my photos how I have kept everything straight.

Next, I wrapped each piece in the foil.  All twenty little bundles of chocolate.  Making sure to keep them separated.

After that, I used painter’s tape to label the bars. I wrote the number 1 on 5 pieces of tape and stuck it to all the pieces of foil wrapped chocolate from that chocolate bar. Pretty quick work actually.

Once I was done that, I grouped the bars into piles of where they were going, samples 1-5 in each pile.

Then I used last year’s calendar to wrap up the bundles, creating a pouch by folding the calendar and using a sticker to hold it shut. The calendar was a way of adding something cheerful and colourful so when opening the parcel there would be a pop of colour.

I then slid these into an envelope with a few other goodies (including some of my chocolate bar colouring pages for the kids to enjoy as the grown ups ate the chocolate). Then I headed to the post office and sent the parcels off.

I also made a tasting sheet to go along with these. I chose to not mail the tasting sheets and asked my friends (in a little note) to message me when they got the parcel, and then I will email them the tasting page for them to take notes. That way they have the option to print it and take notes, to not take notes, or to take notes on their devices. I also included a few tips for tasting and links to some online flavour wheels.

^{***Do remember chocolate doesn’t like to get too hot or to freeze, so check the temperature before you ship.***}