HoCho Fest 2016: 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23

Each year, the Vancouver Hot Chocolate Festival brings together cafes, confectionaries, and restaurants to create specialty hot chocolate beverages to fundraise for a great cause. This year, proceeds of the festival will be going towards supporting the Downtown Eastside Women's Job Training Program of the PHS Community Services Society and East Van Roasters. Each year, I join this win-win-win situation by dropping in to every possible location, tasting delicious drinks and snacks, reviewing my stops, and supporting this superb cause.

This post features: French Made Baking, Butter Baked Goods, Chocolate Arts, Diva at the Met, and Bella Gelatería.

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HoCho 17: Magic Beans, French Made Baking

On a grey Saturday afternoon - which also happened to fall on National Croissant Day! - we made our way to French Made Baking for a cocoa! FMB changes their flavour every day, cycling through 4 for this year's festival, and Sunday's flavour was "Magic Beans", a white hot chocolate with tonka and vanilla-bean flavours accompanied by a rosemary and sea salt puff pastry twist.

HoCho Fest 2016: 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Each year, the Vancouver Hot Chocolate Festival brings together cafes, confectionaries, and restaurants to create specialty hot chocolate beverages to fundraise for a great cause. This year, proceeds of the festival will be going towards supporting the Downtown Eastside Women's Job Training Program of the PHS Community Services Society and East Van Roasters. Each year, I join this win-win-win situation by dropping in to every possible location, tasting delicious drinks and snacks, reviewing my stops, and supporting this superb cause.


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HoCho 6: Mumbai Meets Paris, Thomas Haas

On Thursday morning, PSYC 325 reading in hand, I made my way to an annual all-star for the festival: Thomas Haas.

HoCho Fest Day 23: Monkey's Uncle

Happy B.C. Family Day!

To celebrate the day, some of the folks I love came out to my end and we all went for "Italian soul food" at the restaurant Incendio. My pasta was delectable, and the crusts of my family members' pizzas were as well.

S and N's pizza.

My rotini pomodoro pasta.

Mom and J's pizza.

 












After our lunch, we made the journey over to the hot chocolate location for the day - the second trip to Bella Gelatería! I thought it would be a good spot to showcase some of the festival's creativity and unique locations to my family.

Monkey's Uncle: gBAR made from banana liquer and swirls of "To Die For"
banana bread crumb. Served with a slice of Erin Ireland's "To Die For"
Banana Bread.

The gelato gBAR for this drink tasted SO GOOD! It tasted exactly like banana bread, except it was in a popcicle form. S and N tried this as well, but tried it instead in a cone and dipped it in their white hot chocolate (with moderate success). 

Dipping our banana bread gBAR into the dark almond milk hot chocolate made it melt, and the oozing flavours tasted oh-so-yummy. The hot chocolate was dark and nutty from the almond milk, and was quite filling. Similarly to my last experience at BG, the gBAR did not flavour the hot chocolate very strongly, and the flavours of it were hardly present until the last quarter of the drink, where it became thicker with the gelato and hints of banana crept up.

As was the case last time, the "To Die For" banana bread was delectable, and I think that everyone enjoyed their hot chocolate experiences as well. 



I personally think that last year's hot chocolate at BG was superior because of how strong the flavours were. However, this year's is very unique in how you come to have the specialty drinks - to make this year's top last year's, I think the drinks should be smaller so that the gBARs can flavour the hot chocolate more effectively (maybe 12oz drink cups instead of what appear to be 16oz ones would help).