The Gift Gamers Will Gobble Up: Chocolate Space Invaders.

Fruition is a small batch Bean-to-Bar Chocolate Workshop in the Catskill Mountains of New York and Shaloon is a design studio in Brooklyn, NY. Together they created the Chocolate Invader.




This collaborative effort between Fruition Chocolate and Shaloon brings us delicious small batch chocolate made in the shape of a classic video game character from Space Invaders, an arcade video game developed by Tomohiro Nishikado and released in 1978.



The Chocolate Invader, which weighs 50 grams, is created with with Single Origin 66% Dark Chocolate crafted from Costa Rica Cacao and Peruvian cocoa:


The beans are sorted by hand to remove any foreign materials or less than perfect quality beans. Each batch of chocolate invader is made from beans from one region. The genetics, climate, and post harvest processing effect the final flavor of cocoa beans from every region, yielding unique flavors from origin to origin.

The beans are then slowly roasted and then the shells are removed.:


The cocoa is mixed with evaporated cane juice and cocoa butter:


The cocoa is ground in a granite melangeur for 4 days. When complete, its texture is extremely smooth and the flavor is nuanced and in balance. The mill uses two 40 pound granite wheels to refine the particle size of cocoa until grittiness is no longer detected on your palate.

Once finished, the chocolate is tempered and molded into invaders. Tempering is the process by which chocolate is warmed and cooled to specific temperatures in order to induce the propagation of stable cocoa butter crystals. Proper tempering will allow the chocolate to set shiny and have its characteristic snap.



The design was produced on a CNC (computer numerically controlled) machine to create the mold. The metal plate was then used to thermoform plastic, creating the molds they used to shape the chocolate into an invader.


The Chocolate Invader was designed in 3D CAD. You can download the STL model for their chocolate invader here at Thingverse

The Three Bar Gift Set:


three 50 gram 66% dark chocolate bars
- invader mini-poster
- invader sticker
- invader postcard
- joy of eating 69 pixels
$20, buy it here

2-Bars + Laser Engraved Box:

- two 50 gram 66% dark chocolate bars
- limited edition engraved wood box
- invader mini-poster
- invader sticker
- invader postcard
- joy of eating 46 pixels
$18, buy it here


Fan of Space Invaders? 
Then you'll want to check these out:

The Space Invaders Watch:


The Space Invader's Couch:


The Space Invader's Rings:

A Sweet Treat For Control Freaks. Chocri Custom Organic Exotic Chocolate Bars.

No, I'm not talking about just adding your own label or uploading a picture to the wrapper. I'm talking about truly creating your own chocolate bars from scratch.


above: three examples of possible options for your own created chocolate bars

chocri is a German startup, founded in September 2008, but launched in the US in January 2010. What they do is we allow you to customize your own chocolate bar right on their website.

You start with an organic Belgian chocolate base of milk, white or dark chocolate and then choose from a selection of over 100 of gourmet, organic and exotic ingredients (fruit, grains, nuts, spices, confections and decor).



If you don't know anything about ingredients, they also offer many recommended combinations and options to make the selection simple.

Once you've chosen or built your bar, you can name it (they print the name and the ingredients on the package), and then they hand-make the bars in Germany and ship them off to you.




From bacon to blueberries, pretzels to pecans, you can be as adventurous or as safe as you'd like. I made three to test them out (shown below).


One was dark chocolate with real orange bits and orange chocolate drops, another was milk chocolate, pecans and toffee and the third was milk chocolate with organic salted pretzels and caramel chocolate drops. And yes, they are, er.... were, delicious.

So, how do you do it?
You start with your choice of milk, white or dark chocolate as the base:



Then you are walked through the process to choose as many or as few additives as you wish from the following options (click on each image below to enlarge):

Choose your fruit:

Your spices:

Your nuts:

Your confections:

Your decor:

Your grains:




There's no minimum. You can choose to make one bar or one hundred bars. Once you've selected your ingredients for your chocolate bar(s), they print the name you choose and the ingredients on the individual package, then ship them right to your door.



They use only the best ingredients, such as organic, fair trade chocolate from Belgium. Making them even more delicious is the fact that they also donate a percentage of otheir revenues to DIV Kinder, an organization that supports children at the Ivory Coast, and you are free to add your own donation at checkout.


above: the Chocri team

What are you waiting for? With Easter and Mother's Day right around the corner, these would make awesome gifts.
Get started here.




If you like chocolate, you'll love this:

The Art of Chocolate. Oops, Reverse That.

Eurochocolate Festival Souvenirs: (yes, of course they are chocolate)

If you missed this year's Eurochocolate festival which just ran in Italy from Oct 13th- Oct. 21st, you can still get your chocolate fix thanks to some of the fun products from the festival, now available online here.

Check em out:


Above: Chocprin (chocolate aspirin)



Above: Chocopower (chocolate batteries)


Above: Cazzuola (comes in many flavors)


Above: Tavoletta's Chocolate Cellphones (many different flavors)


A little bit about the festival:

The Eurochocolate festival of Perugia 2007 has its core center in the historic center of the city, from Rocca Paolina up to the squares and the internal areas: Carducci Gardens, Piazza Italia, Piazza della Repubblica, Corso Vannucci, Via Mazzini, Via Fani, The Terrace of the Covered Market, and Piazza November IVth.

The kermis Eurochocolate Perugia 2007 has earned in a couple of years the sympathy of the people asserting itself as the most popular festival of the chocolate and the most followed by Italians, making of Perugia the European capital of the chocolate. For nine days the Umbrian chief town transforms itself for the occasion in a huge open-air pastry-shop for the delight of all the greedy persons and the slaves of cacao.

At Eurochocolate Perugia festival will be organized dozens of big events concentrated on the "food of the gods" with exhibitions, laboratories, internships, cooking classes, tasting, expositions, banquets, celebrations and the final prices: Eurochocolate Awards.
Each year new themes and entertainment are developed like for example "the prisoners of the chocolate" of the 2001 edition, and the activities of the section "Ciok si Gira!" dedicated to the cinema of the 2002 edition.
For all the tourists the occasion is without any doubt a good one to discover the most remote corners of this antique medieval center and to enjoy the famous Umbrian hospitality.

Buy the above chocolate goodies (and more) from eurochocolate here.