London Chocolate Festival!

Hello everyone!

Today I dragged my housemate to the tenth London Chocolate Festival, a festival celebrating all things chocolate that is held at Southbank. 

Unfortunately, it started to snow really heavily on the way, so we had to wander around the festival collecting snowflakes on our clothes. When we got there, I realised that I'd been to Southbank before - this was where  Ping Pong was located, a restaurant that I'd visited years ago - so much for deja vu! (✿◠‿◠)

Anyway, here are some pretty pretty photos of the stalls:

We made it despite the "snowstorm"!

The first stall we saw was Hotel Chocolat so we ended up buying hot chocolate from them instead of a lesser known stall... >_<

Chocolate violins and scissors~

This stall sold cards with edible chocolate messages in them!

I bought some of this pretty pretty chocolate, but it looks too good to eat... :'(

We managed to get the last two tickets for a chocolate workshop with Damian Allsop who showed us how to make a dessert of Pacari Raw Chocolate, Green Tea Cake and Hot Fruit Gel.

The mirror was a nice touch for those of us sitting at the back~

We got to take part in some tastings too!

This is the green tea meringue mix~

Spreading the fruit gel~

The finished dessert for us to try!

We managed to catch the recipe:

Ganache~ 

1. Dissolve 10g agar in 1l water.
2. Once set, blend and add more water to thin the consistency into a custard or wallpaper paste.
3. Warm it up, then emulsify it with approximately 240g of melted 70% dark chocolate (the one Damian used is Picari chocolate). To do this, add a little bit at a time, then kind of scratch it in to make a shiny elastic mixture - like making a reverse mayo.
4. Leave for 4-5 hours to set. 

Green tea meringue~ 

1. Mix together water and green tea powder to form a paste.
2. Add an equal weight of dextrose, then 10% weight of egg white powder.
3. Blend together, then pipe and dehydrate in an oven at 50 degrees (can leave overnight to set). 

Puree~ 

1. Add carrageenan sea moss powder to blackcurrant puree - or agar (1:10 ratio).
2. Heat to 95 degrees in a big flat pot - thick puree bubbles before it boils.
3. Pour onto a tray to set.
Construct all parts with dark chocolate to look like the dessert in the photo!

So, thanks to this event, chocolate has now been ruined for me forever. I don't think that I can eat Cadbury's or Galaxy anymore, or even Hotel Chocolat without thinking about the awesome samples we got to try at the festival.

Souvenirs that we purchased. The ginger and lemongrass chocolate was to die for! And I'll be giving one of the fruity chocolates to my parents when I go home this Easter! ｡◕‿◕｡

Yishi xxx