All hail the steaming hot chocolate on a bitterly cold day. Some may argue that we Vancouverites rarely suffer a cold that can be called bitter. We do, however, take our hot chocolate seriously.

This weekend marks the start of the 6th annual Vancouver Hot Chocolate Festival. It is presented by CityFood Magazine, with funds raised going to the Downtown Eastside Women’s Job Training Program. Chocolatiers from across the city are pulling out the stops with their fancy cocoa flavours.

From January 16th through Valentine’s Day, you can visit 25 Hot Chocolate Festival locations from the Eastside to the Westside, Uptown to Downtown. Over the course of the month, the chocolate-obsessed can sample 59 different flavours of cocoa. You can try It’s a ClusterFluff at Mink Chocolates. That is: Valrhona Caramelia 36% milk chocolate hot chocolate served with a torched marshmallow and a sparkle stick.

On our visit this weekend to 4th Avenue in Kits, we happily discovered:

Earnest Ice Cream will have Ambrosio Affogato – Molten dark drinking chocolate poured over Tahitian vanilla ice cream and served with a housemade salted chocolate rye cookie. Gem Chocolates invites you to Give Yourself to the Dark Side, with a Darth Vader extra hot chocolate topped with dark whipped cream and served with a Darth Vader mask. The Last Crumb Bakery and Cafe has HC straight from His Lordship. It is Vanilla Earl Grey Chocolate served with a vanilla bean butter cookie.

Here is a list of which locations are serving which types of cocoa on which days:

hot chocolate fest calendar

And a video from a past Hot Chocolate Fest that features many of the 2016 chocolatiers:

Written by Elizabeth Newton
www.creatorsvancouver.com