London Islington: Hen Party and Chocolate making!

Last Saturday I hopped on the train to London, my second favourite place in the world, to go to a hen party. It was for my Mum's friend who's getting married for the second time, so she didn't want any of the cheesy tacky stuff that you would expect from a hen party, and instead it involved a 'treasure hunt' around Islington followed by afternoon tea and a chocolate making workshop!

We started the day off by meeting up at Pizza Express for lunch and having a good old natter. I didn't know many of the people there but they were a really friendly bunch so we soon all made friends! I ordered the Pollo ad Astra pizza (basically chicken and veggies) in the Leggera, which is a smaller pizza, with a hole cut out the middle and replaced with a portion of salad. You're probably thinking 'why on earth would you want salad instead of the middle of your pizza?!' but I think it's yummy! Plus I can never manage a full  pizza on my own.

After this we headed off to start our 'treasure hunt'. I thought it was going to be a bit of an easter egg hunt type of thing, with chocolates hidden for us to find, but it turned out it was just a load of clues, and questions such as 'which famous actress used to live here, and between which years'. I was a bit dubious at first because I don't know Islington that well, plus it was raining a little bit and we had already walked quite a way to get there in the first place. But once we got started I really enjoyed it, they split us up into two groups so my competitive streak came out, and I really enjoyed learning about all the local history and the feeling when you finally found the answer to one of the clues!

When our treasure hunt was finished we headed back to the chocolate makers for our afternoon tea (which was very welcome!) and to start making chocolate!

the table before we made a mess of it!

that's me in the middle :)

We started off by learning about different types of chocolate and the history of chocolate, it's interesting how little I know about something I eat so much!

deep in concentration!

Then we started to make our own giant chocolate buttons, which we could make whatever shape and decorate with anything we wanted. When I poured mine on the baking paper it just so happened to look like a face with ears so I worked with it and made this...

We then made truffles by using 6 tablespoon scoops of melted dark chocolate and 3 tablespoons of double cream and mixing them together, then putting them in a piping bag and squirting little dollops onto the table - queue hilarious laughing from half the table because they slightly resembled the poo emoji - which we left to set for a little while before rolling them into balls and dipping them in melted chocolate and coating or topping them with something - delicious!

When we'd finished making our delicious goodies they gave us gift boxes and cellophane bags with ribbons, so that we could make them look presentable and take them home, which I thought was really cute!

It was a really good day, and I'd certainly recommend it for a hen or birthday party, but you WILL feel sick by then end of the day, because you can't resist having little tasters as you go along!

look at that mess! I look exhausted!

me and my lovely mummy :)

champagne!

If anyone fancies doing the same for an upcoming celebration the company we went with were called myChocolate, the one we visited was in London, but they have workshops in Brighton and Manchester, and I believe they also come to your home, but it probably depends on where you live so it's worth giving them a ring! They aren't the only company who does these sorts of classes, however the girls were really friendly and fun, and of course they do the treasure hunt before hand! So I would certainly recommend them :)

Thanks for reading! xxx