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
