2nd Hot Chocolate Festival + Bella Gelateria

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a Chocolate Festival in the Lower Mainland? Well, there is one called the Festival of Chocolate. However, the events last year were just too far from Vancouver for me to bother going. So, in 2012 I’m gonna be an active member of the next best thing: The 2nd Annual Hot Chocolate Festival.

Put on by City Food Magazine, this is the perfect solution to those winter blues (yes, there are active snow haters out there). Last year, this event didn’t get quite enough traction for me to really get out there, though I did see the awesome Rachel Sawatsky of CocoaNymph Chocolates & Confections cooking up some hot chocolate on Shaw Urban Rush. So when I saw the Tweet and the webpage announcing that there were twice as many participants with a chocolate grand prize ($300 in gift certs or a 2013 festival pass) to be awarded on Valentine’s Day to the winner of their Tweetup contest, I said to myself, to hell with Dine Out Vancouver. (Don’t get me wrong, I wish I could do Dine Out, but the choices are way too many and I’m just too busy to get organized and schedule out all of my dinners.)

The Hot Chocolate Festival started last Sunday and runs for four weeks until Valentine’s, so there’s no excuse to try out at least one vendor. So with my boyfriend in hand I went to one place I’ve always wanted to visit in the summer: Bella Gelateria.

Dark Chocolate Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate with Biscotti

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My second calling: Xoxolat’s Chocolate 101 class

I love chocolate. I always have. So when I saw the daily deal on Social Shopper for a Chocolate 101 tasting class + box of chocolates for $20 at Xoxolat, I grabbed two for me and my date. What I did not realize upon visiting the class was how my mind would open up to the world of chocolate. You don’t understand. I’m changed.

The class was held on a Sunday night by Hodie Rondeau of Xoxolat (pronounced sho-sho-la) who is an aspiring connoisseur – she knows much about the process of how chocolate is made from the bean in plantations 20-30 degrees from the equator to how it gets to her shop. And she says she’s still learning.

She started off with a little tour of her shop, which is the largest source of fine chocolate in Canada. I learned that REAL chocolate bars have the percentage of cocoa content presented on the bar, which typically ranges from 65-100% for darks. Some of these go up to $16-18 per bar.

Francois Pralus Chocolate (from Paris)

Then, we tasted. We started off with some cocoa nibs, which are the purest we can get after knocking down the beans from trees. Very bitter, but I could taste that hint of sweetness that we all love about chocolate. It was fascinating to taste chocolate in its pure form.

100% from Madagascar

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