The Brighton Chocolate Festival took place in New Road today. It followed last week’s Food Festival, which was disappointing for being mostly cake-based yet similtaneously awesome for being cake-based. Although, I’d hoped for more savoury things last week we discovered salt caramel tarts, which were mind blowingly good (more on these later).
The Chocolate Festival was a little disappointing too, with several of the stalls being the same as last week. There was some interesting looking hot chocolate, in a range of flavours from white chocolate and peppercorn, through to chilli and more conventional mint. And to our great delight, the salt caramel tart lady was back. They’re delicious pastry cases, filled with runny salt caramel, dusted with thick cocoa powder. You can see them in the photo at the bottom on the left:
The rest of the stall looked particularly delicious too, with the rhubarb tarts catching my eye. We were delighted to discover that the lady is due to open a shop, “Treacle & Co” in Church Rd, Hove. The caramel tarts were a fantastic high tea, with a dose of thick double cream on the side.
Salt Caramel seems to be the next big thing in confectionary – perhaps replacing the once revolutionary but now ubiquitous chilli. A high-end, award-winning chocolatier was selling a selection including a stunning salt caramel, and a mouth-quiveringly good passion fruit, both covered in silky, bitter dark chocolate.
They were also introducing their brand new salt caramel lollipops, covered in dark chocolate, encasing a layer of popping candy. Naturally, we had to have some… they’ll be on general sale in the autumn…
The rest of the festival was a bit dull. There were one or two good chocolatiers, but nothing outstanding and few samples on offer. Then there was a pastry and bread stall, that was distinctly lacking in chocolate. One of the larger stalls had eye catching designs of coloured and flavoured chocolate, with little animals and plaques – great for gifts, but fairly ordinary chocolate-wise. A little too sweet for the real chocoholic, the sort of dirty Dairy Milk-style that you’d wolf down, rather than something to be savoured.
Because it was a chocolate festival and I had to have chocolate, I bought a chocolate and raspberry brownie which was dense, sticky and distinctly average. In all, a mixed bag.
