This weekend we enjoyed attending the Chocolate Lovers Festival in the city of Fairfax, Virginia. It was a gorgeous day to walk around the quaint old town center, marvel at the beautiful chocolate cake creations, and taste some excellent chocolates. It was a day in chocolate heaven!
Our day started with a breakfast of delicious chocolate chip pancakes followed by a tasting of Starbuck's Vanilla Robust Tea Latte, one of the festival sponsors. Temporarily satisfied with our first chocolate tasting, we then proceeded to gain some knowledge on cake making and decorating. A Question and Answer session was headed by Warren Brown, the owner of CakeLove and Love Café in Washington, D.C., as well as host of Food Network's Sugar Rush. It was very instructive to hear his approach to making cakes with fresh and inspirational ingredients. Joining the session were also Norman R. Davis and Zane Beg, owners of The Sweet Life in Annandale, Va., who have been featured in multiple Food Network’s cake decorating challenges. Norman Davis then demonstrated how to decorate a cake utilizing various innovative tools and special ingredients.
At the Chocolate Challenge competition, we viewed and helped in the judging of cakes created specially for this occasion. The chocolate purse was my personal favorite.
We were completely overwhelmed by the multiple chocolate truffles, pastries, and other chocolate treats at the Taste of Chocolate display. We chose to taste some of our favorites, including those from the Confection Connection, the Schakolad Chocolate Factory in Arlington, Virginia, and the Watergate Pastry Shop in Washington, DC.
One spectacular exhibit was from Capitol Chocolate Fountains, featuring magnificent liquid chocolate consumed by dipping fruits or wafers in the spinning fountains. This treat was simply irresistible!
We finished our day as chocoholics with a Death by Chocolate wine tasting, offered by The Wine Bar in Fairfax. We tasted three different sweet wines from Italy, France, and Portugal accompanied by chocolate truffles. Our clear favorite was Brachetto D'Acqui from the southern Piedmont in Italy, with wonderful aromas of black raspberry and black cherry, medium sweet and lightly sparkling, with subtle flavor hinting of violets and cloves. This wine was outstanding, and perfect with fruit or chocolate! The other wines tasted were more traditional desert wines, including a Tannat from Maydie in France, and a 2001 late bottled vintage Port from Taylor Fladgate. Sweeter and less subtle, we nonetheless enjoyed these refreshening wines paired with excellent dark chocolate.
This slide show features the best pictures from our Chocolate Festival experience, including all the gorgeous cakes at the Chocolate Challenge competition. View it in full screen!
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Thank you, Salt and Pepper, for giving me a wonderful award for this post!
