Sweet Treats from Budapest

Rózsavölgyi Csokoládé, Budapest-based, craft 'bean-to-bar' chocolate maker was a great discovery during our Budapest trip. The 20 piece chocolate bonbon assortment box contained the full range of their bonbons - crunchy praline, apricot & passion fruit, chestnut honey, Peru, lemon oil caramel, ancho chili, cardamon, coffee, plum pálinka (Pálinka is a traditional Hungarian fruit brandy), earl grey, orange & praline, sour cherry pálinka & raspberry, bergamot bio marzipan, tarragon, green tea, calamansi (Philippine lime), lavender, vanilla, star anis, smoked wood. Every piece was rich and flavorsome. 

Organic Bergamot-Sailor Mustache was enjoyable. It's chocolate-covered bergamot peels, shaped like a mustache. I haven't had a bergamot peel before. It tasted bitter but floral, quite distinct from orange, lemon and lime, matching with dark chocolate beautifully. Rózsavölgyi Csokoládé takes time to create those funny and delicious mustache. They obtain bergamots harvested by local farmers on the sunny hillsides of Calabria and Morocco, and spend two weeks to candy the fruit peels with organic cane sugar. Then, they trim the candied peels into mustache-sized slices and coat them with their chocolate made from Peruvian cocoa beans. 

Flavored with their original masala spices, their chocolate bar Masala was interesting. We made a hot chocolate with their 'Lavender' hot chocolate, made with Peruvian dark chocolate and a few drops of lavender oil. I made hot chocolate drink by mixing it with almond and oat milk. The result was not so rich chocolate-y. The lavender was subtle. Maybe I will use normal milk next time. We also have their 'Spicy' hot chocolate and will it soon.

Another sweet treat from Hungary was honey. Hungary owns 2/3 of acacia forests in Europe and is famous with its high quality acacia honey. The Hungarian acacia honey that we bought at the Central Market Hall tasted very light and mild. I thought I would prefer a little stronger and sharper honey but after tasting the honey a couple of times I've come to like the gentle acacia flavor. We also brought lavender honey from Budapest. A lady at the honey stand told us it tastes like lavender but not like a soap. We haven't opened the jar yet and look forward to finding out whether she was right.