Bergamo Chocolate Festival

For all those chocolate lovers wandering in Bergamo downtown in these days don’t worry, keep reading and you won’t be disappointed.

The Chocolate Festival or Festa del Cioccolato, in Italian, is an event organised every year in my town. It takes place from January 26th to January 29th and it features a number of exhibitors from artisanal chocolatiers and Italian chocolate producers who offer tasters, displays and products for sale. It’s such a great event! You walk along the “Sentierone”, as we call it here, the longest street in Bergamo downtown and you can smell chocolate in the air, so good!

Each stand has its own chocolate, pralines, cakes, chocolate cookies, muffin, brownies and so much more! I love the chocolate colours, tasting new flavours, talking to people and asking questions about the different types of chocolate.

Chocolate is a little world: there’s always more to learn and so much to try! For example these little cute cake pops were so delicious! My mouth was watering already as I first saw them.

Several were the chocolate craftsmen, producers and traders from Italy at the Chocolate Festival to tempt you with their delicacies. Just to name a few:

• Di Maria – Sweet Love
• Cioccolato Puro
• Stringhetto
• Biolzi
• Spadafora Dessert
• Torta Pistocchi

During this festival I had the chance to attend one of the two show cooking classes directed by the famous Italian pastry chef, Domenico Spadafora.

It was an interesting lesson where he first explained us the importance of the careful selection of high quality chocolate and ingredients. According to Spadafora, three are the fundamental elements to excel: passion, innovation and expertise.

The pastry chef prepared a Buscuit Cake Sacher, a personal revisitation of the famous Sacher, an Austrian cake from Vienna.

The classical Sacher is made of chocolate with a thin layer of apricot jam on top, coated in dark chocolate icing on the top and sides. It is traditionally served with unsweetened whipped cream. It’s such a good choice for a true chocolate lover!

It may look like this cake took hours to make, but it has a surprisingly short list of ingredients. It looked really good. For this recipe Spadafora used raspberry jam instead of apricot jam and dark chocolate mousse. The biscuit is made of a thin and soft layer of chocolate. A small slice splendidly satisfies a sweet tooth, Yummy!!

At the end of the class, we had some tasting. I loved the balance of the ingredients, the raspberry jam added a bright fruitiness into it.

To sum up, The Chocolate Festival in Bergamo can be a great experience to indulge in amazing hand-made chocolates from artisan producers; learn about chocolate skills from local chefs and chocolatiers and of course, eat lots of chocolate!