Happy New Year everyone! May 2018 be delightful and delizious for you with lots of heartwarming treats!
I am writing from Greece where I spent the New Year with family and friends and well, lots and lots of yummy treats from Greece and also from Switzerland. I have been living abroad for a couple of years now and so has my older brother. So I always look forward to the treats he brings home as you can imagine that Swiss chocolate is one of my favourites due to its fame and quality. I am also always impressed by the variety and by the different festive treats that are always such a delight to discover.
So this year we had quite a few lovely treats and I decided that I had to share with you (I mean, in photos - don't think there's anything really left by now!)
I especially enjoyed the Chocolat Stella Bernrain bars that I got in two flavours: Coconut nectar and Pomegranate dark. Absolutely lovely and such original flavours. The Stella Bernrain brand started as Chocolat Stella in Zürich in 1928. One of their early treats were the hüppen, meaning filled wafer rolls, and liqueur-filled miniature chocolate bottles in the 300-year-old family home.
I absolutely loved the packaging of the Ballenberg bar. Now my next goal is to visit their Open-Air Museum for some serious chocolate-making observation! More info here: https://www.ballenberg.ch/en/themes/handcraft/chocolate-production/
Next, I fell in love with the Dragées al cappuccino by Delfosi. I just get so excited by reading the different labels and imagining walking into the different shops (until the next time I visit Switzerland that is!). I just love reading about the history of each brand, where they came from and how they started. You might have noticed that this one is in Italian and they are also famous for their pasta products and other lovely Apulian treats from Southern Italy (Apulien in German, Apulia in Italian).
The word dragée from Old French dragie denotes a sphere-like sweet consisting of a liquid centre or a sugared nut covered with chocolate coating. Other Delfosi products include the alcohol-infused Kugeln, such as Rum Kugeln, Grappa Kugeln, Sambuca Kugeln, with the word Kugeln literally meaning ''bullets''!
Of course Christmas treats means lots of lovely aromatic spices. I just love combining cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and ginger and adding them to anything from hot chocolate to homemade pies and spiced biscuits!
These beautifully aromatic Basler Läckerli are traditional to Basel and are basically hard spiced biscuits. If you love crumbly textures, these might not be your kind of biscuit, but I think they are worth a try with some coffee or other hot beverage - you can even dunk them to soften if you like.
I found the sugary-spicy texture really interesting and kind of heartwarming in the way it can transfer you to old Basel. Honey, hazelnuts, almonds, candied peel, and Kirsch are used to make the dough which is cut into rectangular pieces while still hot from the oven.
Unfortunately, one of them was my least favourite and didn't have much except for the first piece I tried. The Bündner Nusstorte is a caramelised nut-filled pastry originally from canton Graubünden in Switzerland. This is the Fontarocca nut pie with a shortbread like crust and a nut filling. It was a bit bland for my taste and a bit too crumbly, but indeed very festive.
I absolutely went crazy over the cocoa tin filled with a cocoaseed-like chocolate. The tin is absolutely lovely - I love the colour and all the details - and the packaging overall is... nuts! It comes with a lovely postcard from... The World of Chocolate (Die Welt der Schokolade), which you can find at Marktgasse 6 in Basel.
Isn't the shape amazing? Look at the rind-like curves on the chocolate shell! Visit their shop here: http://www.xocolatl-basel.ch/
We enjoyed some freshly made panettone from the Pasticceria de Graziela, a family business since 1985. Here is their site: http://www.dagraziella.com/
You can find Da Graziella in Dornacherstrasse 283 in Basel. The panettone didn't last a day and I only got the chance to have one scumptious slice and a fluffy half.
The only savoury treat were the Tanja Grandits roasted almonds (geröstete Mandeln in German) from the Restaurant Stucki at Bruderholzallee 42 in Basel. The Tanja Grandits collection includes other roasted nuts such as walnuts in a variety of flavours such as tomato & aniseed, cashew, green tea & chili and macadamia, rose & sumac. This one is with lemon & ginger (Zitrone & Ingwer). Other exciting combinations can be found in their spices section (look out for Gewürze), such as Rose Szechuanpfeffer & Hibiskus or Grüntee Limette & Kardamom.
Lastly, we had some Caotina hot chocolate powder to prepare our favourite hot chocolate to drink in front of the fireplace. It hasn't been cold this winter in Athens, except for a few odd nights maybe, but this has barely been winter in the broadest sense. Can't complain though, I had so much energy from all the sunlight! It really makes a difference getting two more hours of daylight every day plus all the bright sun. So bright that I used sunglasses and even was lying in the sun like a cat.
So these are just a few treats I wanted to show you and I hope you enjoyed as much as I did. I also hope you don't hate me since I only shared in photos, I just couldn't contain my excitement. I hope you spent these holidays with your beloved ones and best wishes for 2018.
Lots of love & chocolate,
Liz