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Determined. Colourful. Self-Taught.
Tina is, by her own description, determined. The kind of person who doesn’t do things halfway. She’s either all in or not at all—and with chocolate, she’s all in.
She has spent years at a desk, and somewhere along the way, she learned to recognize what truly makes her happy. It is the kitchen, the market, the moment someone bites into something she made and their face changes. She describes herself as her own worst critic — a perfectionist who notices the scratch on a piece that no customer would ever see. The standard she holds herself to is entirely self-imposed. So is the quality of what ends up on the table every weekend.
The market has given her something she did not fully anticipate: community. The vendors who show up every week, the regulars who seek her out, the unexpected conversations that happen across a table of colourful chocolate. A full-time desk job still fills her days, but she is working toward something else — a shop of her own, a place to eventually retire into doing the thing that makes her feel most like herself.
What keeps her going is simple. The reactions. The double takes. The person who says it tastes as good as it looks. She still thinks about the young man who remembered her mother's birthday. Those moments are what make the late nights worth it.
Dreams that keep enduring colour.
The pieces people come back for...
The Dubai pistachio bar became a phenomenon before Tina brought it to her table. She makes the bars in a hefty mold — weighing roughly a pound — filled with pistachio and kataifi pastry, capped in tempered chocolate. For those who want a taste without a full bar, she also offers bite-sized versions. The surface is finished in golds and greens using hand-mixed cocoa butter pigments applied by airbrush, paintbrush, and hand.
Tina blends Biscoff cookies into a smooth caramel-warm paste, deliberately leaving cookie chunks in for texture and crunch. Made in a round mold with a different surface design every week. Inspired in part by a 2024 visit to the Sugar Plum Factory chocolate shop in Ireland. A Biscoff-Dubai hybrid bar — combining kataifi pastry with cookie butter filling — is currently in development.
Date in Dubai Bonbon
Cherry Cordial
Chocolate Ganache
Specialty Easter Egg
Specialty Cookie Butter Egg Bonbon
Specialty Easter Blueberry Cheesecake Bonbon
A Heartfelt Note
I have wanted this my whole life. I say that knowing what it sounds like — and meaning every word of it.
It took me until my fifties to get here. A dream deferred, not forgotten. There were false starts, jobs that paid the bills but never fed the part of me that needed to make something. I was turned down by the first market I applied to. I cried on my first day selling — real tears, behind a table full of chocolate, wondering if I had made a mistake. I work until eleven at night. None of that is the romantic version. But it is the honest one.
To everyone who has come to my table — thank you. You come back. You bring your family. You send messages I think about for weeks. You have turned a market table into something that feels like belonging, and I did not expect that. I am so grateful for it.
I am building toward a shop, toward doing this full time, toward the version of this life I have always pictured. I am not there yet. But I am closer every week. Until then, I will be at the market with something new for you — something colourful, something made with everything I have. I hope it brings you a little joy. I am working every day to make sure it does.
— Tina, The Velvet Whisk
