It couldn’t be Christmas without chocolate coins

The satsumas are safe but thanks to Cadbury acting like a complete Fruit’n’Nut case there will be no furtive stocking of Christmas stockings with Dairy Milk’s gaudy gold coins this year. The strange cessation of production might have caused a sensation, but it’s left a gap for chocolate currency that’s actually worth eating. Unlike their mass-produced predecessors, the chocolate in these coins is classy enough to command rather more than their foiled face value.

Rococo

Whether you opt for the gold, silver or bronze-foiled version, you’ll spend more than a penny on a Rococo chocolate coin. But you get what you pay for; almost 60g of the decent-quality chocolate you’d expect from Chantal Coady’s company. One that’s a guaranteed to please both child-sized chocoholics and the big kids who manage to snatch a piece for themselves.

Artisan du Chocolat

 The pretty patterns on variously stamped onto the face of each disc is a nice nod to cocoa’s historic role as a form of currency. Artisan du Chocolat’s coinage will be viewed as value for money by fans of easy-eating, mega-creamy chocolate, with one-fifth of the bodyweight made up of milk solids and vanilla rounding out the flavour. A sweet, simple pleasure.

Veruca Chocolates

These American inventions demonstate that chocolate coins are not just for Christmas. Nope, this is Kosher ‘Gelt for Grown-ups’, and can be happily had at Hanukkah or any other celebration. Unlike commonplace crappy chocolate coins, these babies boast 64% cocoa with the pleasing crunchy munch of cacao nibs. Each piece of this throughly modern moolah is hand-hewn to resemble a lustre-dusted Judean coin from ancient times.

Chococo

The King Alfred coin is fit for royalty not only because of the local nobleman it depicts, or the fact that it’s made by the artisans at Dorset-based chocolate company Chococo, but also because it came top in the Financial Times’s chocolate coin taste test. The accolade afforded means the value of this particular currency is currently way up. The FT team should have bought shares in those stocks…

Chocolate Trading Co.

Completely standard 30% milk chocolate generally goes down well on Christmas Day, and it’s always nice to introduce a new novelty. These Chocolate Trading Co. chocolate coins are pretty accurate portrayals of halfpennies; a coin that some young whippersnappers in your clan are unlikely to have ever encountered. Give them an edible education by slipping a few in their stockings. The £1 versions are fun for fooling people into thinking you’re a generous soul.

Divine

These Christmas-sy coloured, 70% cocoa chocolate coins taste good and do good. Divine is devoted to working with the Fairtrade farmers who own 45% of the company, helping them grow both cocoa and their communities. By splashing your cash on these coins, you’re making a small investment in making someone else’s Christmas very merry – and you get to munch your money’s worth of dark chocolate discs. Everyone’s a winner.

  Fortnum & Mason

Shiny pennies are small change for the typical Fortnum’s shopper, but that doesn’t mean chocolate coppers aren’t appealing. The famous clock is on the face of each of the variously-sized coins contained within the ritzy gold net pouch. The milk chocolate they’re made of is entirely edible, but let’s face it – the real value of these blingy things is in the fur coat, not the knickers.

Larger denominations – Lidl’s euros and bank notes

The cash value each of these chocolate chunks represents is higher than the other chocolate coins in this list, but Lidl’s net of mixed money can be netted for far less than its counterparts. The chocolate these edible Euros are composed of is firmly in the confectionary camp, but the fun factor alone makes the purchase worth it – and will make the giver feel very generous indeed.

Feel you’ve earned more festive chocolate?

• To read about Paul A Young’s Christmas chocolate collection, click here
• To read about Christmas chocolate from La Maison du Chocolat, Lidl, Montezuma’s, & more, click here
• To read about Christmas chocolate from Lakeland, Hotel Chocolat, Bord Bia & more, click here
• To read about Christmas chocolate from Valrhona, Sous Chef and Carluccio’s & more, click here
• To read about Christmas chocolate from Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, Marc Demarquette, click here