The Chocolate Festival – Easter 2011

As you can probably imagine, The Chocolate Festival is one of my favourite events of the year. Held bi annually at Londons Southbank, the event’s organizer Yael Rose does a sterling job in bringing together some of the best chocolatiers around. Held in the run up to Easter, there was unsurprisingly a large quantity of egg shaped treats on offer but loads more besides. Blessed with an uncharacteristically gorgeous, scorchingly hot April weekend, the stallholders were kept on their toes in a bid to stop their wares from melting away. I was pleased to see plenty of familiar faces and a couple of new ones too and managed to come away with a pleasingly bulging shopping bag (and a belly full of samples!)

Chocolate & Love had a good selection of their own chocolate and also products from brands they stock in their on-line shop. Richard was on fine form as ever in his mission to bring fine chocolate to the masses and I was delighted to bag myself one of only a couple of Geert Vercruysse’s selection boxes all the way from Belgium. Sharing the Chocolate & Love stand was Paul Wayne Gregory selling his award winning range of super glossy chocolates and the best lollipops you’ll ever eat!

Original Bean is an ethical chocolate company producing fantastic tasting bars, they also had for sale boxes of single origin chocolates made for them exclusivly by Geert Vercruysse using their very own chocolate. 

I’m not a massive fan of Damian Allsops water ganaches but I was very intrigued by the big bowl of Dulche de Leche mini eggs he had and couldn’t resist purchasing a few.

William Curley had a selection of goodies but I only had eyes for his retro inspired Nostalgia range, in particular the Marathon and Bounty bars, can’t wait to tuck into those…

Jaz & Juls made the most of the weather and were offering refreshing chocolatey drinks as well as selling their high quality drinking chocolate. I have to confession to make here; I have a box of their hot chocolate at work and have discovered it makes a very good snack eaten neat with a teaspoon….

I’m a sucker for anything pistachio and Artisan Du Chocolat had a very good pistachio mini egg, they were also selling their extremely popular Creme de la Creme eggs. The milk egg with passion fruit creme is just as good as last years, I feel they still need to work on their dark version, the fruity filling being no match for the former.      

Italian Baruzzo had available a range of their immaculately presented beautiful chocolates and plenty of samples

I love Rococo’s packaging and they always have some gorgeous novelties, I had my eye on the cute little egg boxes of chocolate quails eggs with either salted caramel or praline fillings.

I met Bill McCarrick of Sir Hans Sloane recently at the Academy of Chocolate judging so was delighted to see him here with his own chocolates. It seems I missed out on trying his reputedly amazing peanut butter chocolate eggs but he was incredibly kind enough to give me two little boxes full, one of cocoa butter, the other with cocoa liquor, lets see if I can come up with something tasty myself…

Caroline of Sugargrain had her usual, ever changing selection of delicious gluton free brownies, cakes and some rather exciting sounding chilli and popping candy cupcakes, she also let me try some lovely sugar free courgette cake.

Newcomers Miki had some of the prettiest Japanese inspired packaging I’ve seen. I didn’t get to try any chocolates this time but the dark chocolate covered ginger was truly delicious!

It’s always a pleasure bumping into the boys from Lucky’s with their Alice in Wonderland inspired creations. They had a stunning selection of magical looking eggs and I got a little over excited when they told me about the new range of cakes they’re about to release. The flavours truly sound out of this world and they even managed to produce samples of the banana and ginger one I so liked the sound of. I cannot wait to get my hands on them, for the meantime though I left with some of their super cute humpty dumpty eggs. 

Expect plenty of chocolate reviews from me in the near future!