Chocolate Bbc

Steffi started selling her handmade chocolate from her mum's kitchen in 2014. She now works from a small unit based in the Tyne Tunnel industrial estate with 27 staff and sells the chocolate using social media.

Art writer Waldemar Januszczak explores the revolutionary achievements of the Impressionists.As the name suggests Waldemar Januszczak's aim is to show that despite appearing on chocolate boxes and tea towels the impressionists' art was and still is pretty revolutionary. Despite veering into gimmickry from time to time the series covers the ground well. The last episode, in which he considers the optical theories underlying Seurat's dottiness and how Monet's cataracts affected his vision, is perhaps the best of the lot.

Over 30 years ago Antonio Carluccio and Gennaro Contaldo separately left their native Italy for Britain where, in time, they met, worked together and established themselves as leading authorities on Italian cooking.

Maitre d' and Extraordinary Places to Eat host Fred Sirieix and GP Zoe Williams open a restaurant with a difference, welcoming 20 unsuspecting diners for a slap-up meal. It all sounds normal enough, but this restaurant has something unexpected back of house - a functioning gym, where a group of fitness fanatics are poised on exercise bikes, treadmills and rowing machines, ready to burn off every single calorie ordered and consumed by the diners.

This delectable episode traces our love affair with chocolate back to York. It was here that chocolate was transformed from a luxury drink for the rich into the nation's favourite treat. Presenter Steph McGovern leads the makers through the ages, guided by Yorkshireman and chocolatier Paul A Young. Chocolate started as an expensive luxury drink. The makers begin the painstaking task of preparing the cocoa beans from scratch; roasting, shelling and grinding the beans, as would have been done in the Georgian era. Then in early Victorian times, the makers have to create a more affordable blended drink. They are appalled to learn that the ingredients include plaster, brick dust and crushed sea shells.

Gregg Wallace reconnects with the McVitie’s factory in Harlesden, north west London, which he visited back in 2017. The coronavirus crisis caused a huge spike in the nation's desire for sweet treats, and sales of the firm’s chocolate digestives rose by 71 per cent, meaning in just two months, they sold an astonishing 12.5 million packets.

Chocolates are an essential part of many people's festive celebrations. In this Christmas special, Gregg Wallace visits a factory which produces a staggering two million tins of festive chocolate assortments a year. At materials intake he receives 20 tonnes of liquid chocolate at 50 degrees Celsius. This is used in 10 of the 12 sweets in the tin. Everyone has their favourite (for Gregg it's the purple-wrapped caramel-coated hazelnut) and he follows the supersized batches of the toffee, orange and strawberry varieties on their journey from tanker to tin. In just one hour 800 kilos of toffee is cut into precise 10mm x 55mm sticks before they disappear under a chocolate waterfall.

Gregg Wallace is in London at Europe's largest biscuit factory, where they produce 80 million biscuits every day. He follows the production of chocolate digestives, from the arrival of 28 tonnes of flour right through to dispatch. Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is on the trail of that chocolate. Plus, Ruth Goodman examines the link between biscuits and digestion.

Gregg Wallace reconnects with the McVitie’s factory in Harlesden, North West London, which he visited back in 2017. The coronavirus crisis caused a huge spike in the nation's desire for sweet treats, and sales of the firm’s chocolate digestives rose by 71 per cent, meaning in just two months, they sold an astonishing 12.5 million packets. Cherry Healey is on the trail of the chocolate, the most expensive ingredient at around ?2,000 per tonne, and historian Ruth Goodman investigates the link between biscuits and digestion.

Gregg Wallace is in London at Europe's largest biscuit factory, where they produce 80 million biscuits every day. He follows the production of chocolate digestives, from the arrival of 28 tonnes of flour right through to dispatch. Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is on the trail of that chocolate. Plus, Ruth Goodman examines the link between biscuits and digestion.