When should I buy my Christmas chocolate?

All White Rabbit chocolate is made by hand in the micro-kitchen above the shop in Dyer Lane, Beverley. This is done in small batches to ensure quality and freshness. Seven days a week the chocolatiers are busy; the kitchen does not close!

When it comes to purchasing solid crafted chocolate for Christmas, for example the Santa bunnies in hats, the reindeer scene or the ‘Merry Christmas’ tiles, buy according to your shopping schedule. These items will keep until their ‘use by’ date, which for white chocolate is 6 months from the date of production. For milk chocolate it is 8 months, and dark chocolate 10 months.

Truffles, including seasonal truffles like cranberry vodka and Christmas pudding, are a different matter. Many contain fresh dairy butter or cream, and this impacts their shelf life. To enjoy them at their very best, they should be consumed when they are no more than 1 week old. That said, they are still delicious up to two months after they have been made. In December the kitchen outputs over 1,000 truffles a day to keep up with demand, therefore all the truffles on display are as fresh as you can get, and they are replenished within days. 

The White Rabbit shop gets extremely busy in the 7 days before Christmas, so to ensure maximum quality and avoid disappointment buy your Christmas chocolates in early to mid-December.

On the run-up to Christmas when sales increase, because the chocolates are made in small batches there is a chance that stock will run low. However, products will be replenished within a couple of days. The chocolatiers will maintain this magic trick until the 24th December.

White Rabbit also produce bespoke commissions; boxes made entirely of chocolate, chocolate figurines to suit personalities or chocolate tiles with your own message. Generally the chocolatiers ask for 3 days to 1 week's notice to produce these, but in December when the kitchen is at its busiest, the earlier you place your order the better! After the first week in December there is no guarantee that your piece will be ready on time. Similarly if the shop doesn’t have what you’re looking for, speak to the staff and they can get it onto the shelves in a similar time frame.

For more information about White Rabbit Chocolatiers visit https://whiterabbitchocolatiers.co.uk.