11/11/26

Interview with Sian Bliss, Co-Founder of Late Night Pudding Club

This week we interviewed Sian Bliss, Co-Founder of Late Night Pudding Club, to talk about the inspriration behind the brand, dream collaborations and more.

1. Where did the idea for Late Night Pudding Club originally come from?

I grew up in a beautifully rural area of Wales, and my parents’ cookbooks were my go-to reading. In my family, food is love, and mealtimes decide everything else in the day. I’ve always made everything from scratch: pasta, bread, jam, every element of a cake, even a seven-tier wedding cake. So making chocolate bars was just something I naturally started doing. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t get chocolatier-quality bonbons as a single chocolate bar, or why the ganache inside a cake was so much more delicious than the ganache inside a chocolate bar. So I started making what I wanted to eat, first for myself, then for my family and friends too, and it grew from there.

2. The name is certainly memorable! What’s the story behind it?

It’s a pretty silly story actually… we literally formed Late Night Pudding Club for eating pudding late at night! On a big group holiday, the pudding lovers among us kept missing out on dessert because the rest of the group didn’t want any, so the bill would be requested and off we’d go to bed, no sweet treat to end the evening. So three of us (my co-founder Josh, my sister and me) started sneaking out of our rooms to meet in the hotel lobby for covert desserts. Every secret society needs a name, and Late Night Pudding Club was born! It’s really just about being a dessert fanatic. That trip was around the time I started turning my chocolate bar obsession into a business. The name stuck, and the rest is history.

3. Where do you find inspiration for your unusual and imaginative flavour combinations?

Literally everywhere! The premise is a restaurant-quality dessert as a chocolate bar, kept in the fridge for a late-night treat, but honestly I can’t stop imagining everything as a chocolate bar. Marmalade on toast, a delicious cocktail, nostalgic flavours, a dessert I ate years ago and still hold a candle for.

4. Where do you see Late Night Pudding Club in the next five years?

Josh and I want fresh chocolate bars to carve out a new category in the fridge. Chocolate is such a precious ingredient, and it’s crazy to us that shelf life so often takes priority over flavour. We want to share these bars, and our love for them, as far and wide as possible, while getting people excited about good growing and farming practices worldwide and supporting positive initiatives for both the environment and communities.

5. What’s been the biggest challenge you’ve faced since launching Late Night Pudding Club?

For me it’s temperature control; Josh might say cutting out, foiling and folding over 300 boxes by hand in one sitting! We started out doing absolutely everything by hand, discovering all the trials and tribulations of running a small business along the way. It’s less Late Night Pudding Club and more Late Night Work Club!

6. Are there any dream flavours, collaborations or projects you’d love to explore?

SO many! My favourite part of LNPC is dreaming up all kinds of chocolate bars, and collaborations are my jam (pun intended)! Drawing on my past career as an installation artist, I’d love to create some kind of giant, colourful, delicious and melty LNPC chocolate bar experience.

7. What would your ideal day in London be like?

Got to start with a coffee at Elsewhere and a saffron tea cake with salty butter from Toad, then a long walk along the whole of Regent’s Canal. Somehow we’d end up at Banya in Victoria for borscht and vareniki, and finish the day with a gin martini. Ideally we’d stop by one of London’s many amazing galleries along the way to see something a little sublime and ridiculous, and let’s throw in another sweet treat for good measure! All in all, it’s got to be food-centred, of course, and as long as my dog Nanu can come along, I’m happy!

For more information on Late Night Pudding Club, click here.

Photography courtesey of Late Night Pudding Club

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A free sound-and-art installation is coming to Vinegar Yard

Sep 17

2 min read

A free sound-and-art installation is coming to Vinegar Yard, turning classical music into something you can see, hear and feel. When was the last time you properly listened to something? Not while replying to a WhatsApp, doomscrolling on Instagram or half-watching Netflix with one eye on your phone. Just… listened.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra is hoping to make that increasingly rare activity a little easier with The Power of Listening, a free public sound gallery landing at Vinegar Yard in SE1 from September 21 to 28. It couldn’t be simpler: pop on a pair of headphones, listen to music performed by the Orchestra and take in a series of artworks created in response to what you're hearing. Think of it as a tiny cultural escape hatch in the middle of London.

The project has been created in partnership with the Royal College of Art and legendary graphic designer Neville Brody, whose CV includes concert posters for The Human League and art direction for cult eighties magazine The Face. Eight RCA postgraduate artists have each chosen a different piece of music from the LPO's upcoming season and translated its emotional impact into a visual work. So instead of simply being told that Mahler is moving or Tchaikovsky is dramatic, you get to see what those sounds inspired in someone else's imagination.

One of the works, Anna Korbel's Where Your Brain Stops Scrolling, takes aim at our increasingly fractured attention spans, which is rather apt given that you may well be reading this while simultaneously checking three other things on your phone. The installation launches the LPO's first full season under artistic director Jesús Herrera, whose long-term vision centres on what he calls "deep listening". The project is, in part, a response to what Herrera describes as an "attention crisis", using classical music as a reason to pause, breathe and temporarily escape the never-ending ping of modern life.

And you don't need to be a classical music obsessive to take part. The whole point is to stop for 30 to 60 seconds, put the phone away and see what happens when you give one piece of music your undivided attention. The artworks will also appear on billboards across London, meaning the project won't be confined to Vinegar Yard. But the installation is where you can properly put the idea into practice: headphones on, artwork in front of you, London rushing around in the background.

September 21st - 28th - Free Event - No ticket. No dress code. No knowledge of Shostakovich required. Just turn up, put on the headphones, and listen.

Address: Vinegar Yard, SE1. September 21–28.

Written by Stacey Reeves

Imagery courtesy of Ace of Hearts