"About as Much Use as a Chocolate Teapot" — Exeter Christmas Market no. 2

So realistic!

Being a chocoholic, I've never quite understood that phrase. It might not do as a teapot but it's still chocolate and that's always useful.

Of course, it's the time of year for chocolate Santas, snowmen and reindeer — although the latter look rather worryingly like ear-amputated leftover chocolate bunny rabbits at Easter with different wrapping. We're fairly used to chocolate in odd shapes and sizes by now.

But a chocolate monkey wrench? A chocolate paintbrush? A chocolate slice of mousetrap cheese? A chocolate salami? Why? Why? Why?

I don't know why, but I know this stall from The Amazing Chocolate Workshop  stopped me in my tracks at Exeter Christmas market. It was almost impossible to believe that they were selling chocolate. Luckily, one of them gave me a morsel to prove it and it was delicious chocolate. Gluten-free, 65% delicious chocolate.

Oh, and if you look carefully at the picture above, you'll see they actually do sell chocolate teapots. Dammit, if I'd just noticed that when I was there, I'd have bought a couple of those. What a fabulous Christmas present!

I'm not sure whether they were doing a roaring trade because the chocolate spanners were stealing the show and there was a part of a few people's psyches going 'you'll hurt your teeth on those.' Quite how that works out when our teeth are quite happy to sink into a chocolate Santa, I don't know, but the brain is weird in its wiring until it's used to stuff.

But I do know that now I've looked at the pictures and had a browse on their website, I want to go back and buy stuff.

Unfortunately, they don't sell online yet, but there's a form on the site that you can fill in and they'll tell you when they do.

But if you're near Exeter and you're looking for a genuinely unusual chocolate Christmas present (and one for you too), you simply have to visit this stall.