Cocoa Black

Ruth Hinks is a World Chocolate Master and UK Confectioner of the Year, and she has run Cocoa Black in Peebles since 2008 — a chocolate and patisserie boutique in a restored listed building on the Cuddy, with a riverside garden and a chocolate-and-pastry school that Prince Edward opened in 2016. The work is the serious end of the craft: competition-grade chocolate, pastries to match, and courses that draw students from well beyond the Borders to a market town of eight thousand people. The shop counters the assumption that world-class chocolate requires a city; the queue for the Peebles riverside garden politely disagrees on the town's behalf.