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Start dunking those marshmallows, the sixth annual Vancouver Hot Chocolate Festival is back and sweeter than ever
From January 16 to February 14, 25 local restaurants will be offering up 59 mouth-watering hot chocolate flavours for the Vancouver Hot Chocolate Festival. Whether you want yours topped with coconut whipped cream or poured over ice cream, there is something sure to satisfy every sweet tooth during this one-month event.
Click through for our top five suggestions of places to check out this year.
This year, 49th Parallel’s Hot Chocolate Festival menu includes The Bee’s Knees, a lavender-infused dark hot chocolate; Saturday Nut Fever, a milk chocolate and hazelnut hot chocolate blend; and the number one seller from last year’s Hot Chocolate Festival, the Hot Chocolate and Doughnut Combo, which includes classic hot chocolate served with any doughnut from the Lucky’s Doughnuts showcase.
Artisan chocolate maker Koko Monk is known not just for its great tasting chocolate, but also for its organic ingredients. Koko Monk uses raw origin beans and only natural sweeters. They will be featuring four items for this year’s festival, including the Rashomon, miso white hot chocolate with matcha tea and sake; Istanbul Blues, dark hot chocolate with Ottoman Salep root and cinnamon; Wild Saje, a vegan dark hot chocolate featuring almond milk, caramel, and Turkish coffee; and Lyric and Dagger, black sesame white hot chocolate with lemon and lime caramel. All are served with your choice of a macaron.
East Van Roasters is an artisan chocolate and coffee shop as well as a social enterprise, providing training and employment to women in the downtown Eastside. Their hot chocolates feature high-quality single-origin organic chocolate and coffee. Check out their two offerings for the festival, including The Buzzzzz, which features Hives for Humanity Hastings Street honey with bee pollen stirred into Madagascar single-origin drinking chocolate; and the Peruvian Pick Me Up, which features Peruvian coffee and chocolate ganache, served with a Peruvian chocolate-dipped caramel.
Butter serves up some of the most delicious drinks and baked goods in town. Their menu for the festival features two hot chocolates this year, including he oh-so-sweet Choc-o-choco, coconut hot chocolate and coconut whipped cream, served with a piece of coconut brownie; and The Fluffernutter, white chocolate hot chocolate with peanut butter and butterscotch topped with vanilla marshmallows, erved with peanut butter marshmallow slice.
New to the festival this year, Earnest Ice Cream is offering up two delicious promotions: Ambrosio Affogato and Snow on Mount Kilimanjaro. The first is made of molten dark chocolate and vanilla ice cream, and the latter is a white chocolate mocha with Kenyan espresso.
