The Chocolate Festival - My Heaven! By Jessica

Yesterday, my mum and I visited "The Chocolate Festival", a wonderful festival based entirely around chocolate, and situated on the South Bank in London. One of the first things anyone learns about me is that I ADORE chocolate, so a whole festival about it had to be one of the best things ever!

The festival ranged from more well known brands such as Hotel Chocolat

To ones which I'd never heard of, such as The Village Workshop

First of all, we went into the main tent to see David from Outsider Tart demonstrate some methods and techniques to make "Christmas candy". He was funny, skilled and engaging, passing around loads of food for us to taste. My favourite was a sweet potato pie, including a chocolate layer and a crunchy, christmassy ginger crust. There were also incredible spiced holiday pralines, Martha Washington candy (a coconut and nut centre coated with dark chocolate) and something called divinity (halfway between a meringue and nougat). 

They were all delicious but very sugary, so we wished we'd taken a bottle of water and a bag, so we could take some home!

The festival consisted of loads of stalls, but two really stuck out for me...

1. The first was Choco Rico, a shop that creates "artisan chocolate gifts" a.k.a the coolest chocolate shoes, handbags and birds ever! They are handmade, hollow Belgian chocolates that look mouth-watering and really lifelike - the perfect present for all of my friends! The company also creates mini hearts, Christmas figures, champagne bottles, nameplates, Easter eggs, hats and cupcake and chocolate kits.
2. The second was  The Village Workshop; everything you need to make a gingerbread house. These treats looked amazing, brilliant as a Christmas present or just to have some family fun. The kits looked very thorough and the finished products were fantastic. It is such a cool idea that lets you produce really different creations.

Overall, the chocolate festival was great - walking around it was like a dream! It was a really useful place to find presents, or just try loads of tasters, as there were also cakes/brownies, fudge and churros on sale, not to mention hot chocolate. 

Lots of the chocolates were very rich and not great for children (although my mum seemed happy enough). Apart from this, there was an extraordinary variety of chocolates and I recommend everyone to go sometime in 2014...

The Chocolate Festival is not only in London, so check their website to see where else they are travelling to next year.

Happy eating!

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