A very lovely lady bought me a very thoughtful gift at Christmas, a very beautiful box of nine chocolates decorated with tea cups and cakes. They were to be eaten whilst having a break from making quilts for people, although I have to confess that the greatest pleasure I had from them was just looking at them, even though eating them felt pretty good too.

They are from a company called choconchoc in Somerset, owned by a father and daughter team http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3u0--jomjo

Here is a small excerpt from their 'about us' web page.

The Choc on Choc story started in 2003 in a village nr Bath in the UK by a father-daughter team, Kerr Dunlop and Flo Broughton. Kerr is an accomplished inventor (in the 1980s he designed the immensely popular hedgehog boot wiper), and was messing around with chocolate in the kitchen one day, with a recently graduated Flo. Together they were filling rubber moulds shaped as noughts and crosses thinking that that they would make rather nice presents for the family.

The pair of them devised a business idea and soon they made enough chocolates to take to a trade show in Birmingham. To their astonishment, they came back from the show with a lot of orders from several shops. The rest of the article can be read by clicking here.

I personally like to know the history behind a company, and if it started on a kitchen table or a shed at the bottom of the garden then that's even nicer.

I only played a small part in getting Sam's book out to people, and have watched my youngest son build company's, but it has taught me what great effort and courage it takes to make a business. So I do feel if you like something that you have bought, or been given, and you find out it's been started from humble beginnings then its worth supporting.

So if you want a chocolate gift for someone I can recommend choconchoc

I particularly like the dark chocolate pills for their quirkiness, its almost worth being ill for!