I Love Chocolate!

This Pic is for you Mom!

About a month supply of Baci...

 We went to Perugia, Home of the famous Baci Chocolate, which means Kiss. It is a couple hours North of Rome, population 160,000. It is a beautiful place with the centre of the city elevated to overlook other parts of the city and rolling hills; I have been told it is comparable to Tuscany.

I was asked on Saturday if I would like to come to a chocolate festival. There is no way I could ever say no to such an offer; so Monday morning we took off for Perugia to take part in this marvellous celebration.

Streets flooded with vendors
and chocolate lovers

The centre of the city was covered in chocolate vendors from all over the world. Some had free samples, some had demonstrations and games, others just sold there goodies to the public. The Lindtt tent had a taste-test game, if you won, you got a free full-sized chocolate bar. Us cooks were up for the challenge, and 2 out of 3 of us won a bar. Needless to say the one who failed never heard the end of it for the rest of the day. The bar I got for winning is one of Lindtt’s newest creations and it didn’t last long. It’s dark chocolate with a sprinkle of caramel pieces and salt. Yum. The caramel wasn’t overly rich or sweet and had a pleasant crunch too it. Just enough salt is dusted over to enjoy a sweet and slightly savoury taste over dark chocolate - that I would imagine was around 70% which is not very bitter.

Cute- Cheese and Salami Chocolate

I should have bought the Scotch Bonnet and Rum!

I tried a piece of dark chocolate from Venezuela, it was intensely bitter at first, it made my mouth salivate it was so bitter. This was very intriguing to me so I continued and by the last bite the flavour had nicely settled and somewhat rounded out. The milk chocolate from Venezuela was delicious… since the chocolate itself was so bitter the added milk made it perfect and not too sweet for my palate.

There was also a stand with Mexican chocolate, here they offered us: a roasted cocoa bean which they dipped in a fresh lime and then in cocoa powder. This was very interesting in flavour. It was crunchy and slightly smoky tasting from being roasted and the lime and cocoa powder made for great seasoning and balance.

Brut was intriguing to me...

The best investment I made this day was chocolate covered coffee beans. These are not unheard of, you can get them at most bulk food stores but I just love them. The beans are roasted and crunchy and the chocolate so creamy. I got a mixed pack of white, milk and dark- the dark is the best.

Cocoa pod and roasted cocoa beans

Not every flavour I had at the chocolate festival was satisfying, one of the samples was a VERY sweet cherry covered in dark chocolate. It was just gross. I have also never been a fan of orange and chocolate. I tried a piece of this at Lindtt, orange and pistachio- another new one- I thought maybe with the pistachio I would enjoy the orange. But no, the orange is far too overpowering for me and the flavour of it stuck with me for too long. However, if you are into orange chocolate this might be a different story for you.

Centre Square

As much as I enjoyed the chocolate festival and admiring the interesting chocolates the vendors were selling, I would love to see Perugia without the streets being flooded with tents and Disney-like advertisements. I will go back one day and sit in the square to enjoy a Baci!

Side streets of Perugia