Chocolate stories

Stories of Chocolates and other wonders

19 December 2019

Christmas chocolate sweets, do you know them all?

Christmas chocolate sweets, your favorites ones!

A chocolate Christmas with the best recipes for delicious desserts

We're almost there: Christmas is coming, and the streets have been buzzing for a while with preparations and gifts to buy. What's missing to make Christmas perfect? Chocolate Christmas treats of course! We've drawn up a small list of innovative, traditional and non-traditional chocolate Christmas sweets. Because as you know, when it comes to chocolate,

Cioccolatitaliani is here to deliver!

What Christmas would it be without a dessert?

We at Cioccolatitaliani will never stop fighting the battle against those who don't like Christmas. We love it all; from the Christmas goodies, to the decorations, the gift shopping frenzy, but above all, the delicious desserts. Not the classic Christmas ones, but Christmas chocolate desserts. Almost all over the world, Christmas is celebrated. Every country, every city, and every corner of the world has its traditions, especially food traditions. Those essential dishes without which Christmas itself would make no sense. More or less like chocolate for us.

We have drawn up a small list of desserts from several areas of Italy and Europe that represent Christmas and chocolate.

Chocolate Christmas sweets: the most famous ones

From Liguria to England, the most known Christmas chocolate desserts that you will be eager to taste.

Chocolate Pandolce

A reinterpretation of the classic Genoese pandolce, also well known in the UK as "Genoa Cake." Some describe it is a typical Persian dessert. Others say it is derived from the court of Doge (chief of state) Andrea Doria of the Republic of Venice, who in 1500 launched a competition for the best dessert that best represented Genoa. Thus, the pandolce was created. Our chocolate version of the pandolce still has all the goodness of the original dessert, but is enriched with a dark chocolate glaze on the outside. A detail that will not let you stop after at the first slice.

Parrozzo from Abruzzo, Italy

This dessert, unknown to many, needs a particular presentation. The Parrozzo, from the Italian region of Abruzzo, was born in 1920 from the creativity of a pastry chef from Pescara, Luigi D'Amico. One day he decided to invent a dessert that resembled the shape and color of a rough bread the peasants used to eat. Using eggs to give it a yellow color like that of cornflour bread, and chopped almonds to give it texture, with melted chocolate on top to simulate the dark crust of the bread, he created the Parrozzo. Poet Gabriele D'Annunzio dedicated a sonnet to the dessert: "The Song of the Parrozzo." A chocolate Christmas cake that today represents an entire region and whose goodness introduced it into Italian literature: how could it not be part of our list?

Chocolate Kugelhopf

Many stories have been told about the origins of this dessert. One of these, the most sensational, says that the Three Wise Men introduced the Kugelhopf in Alsace. The name Kugelhopf more likely refers to a German headdress that spread first in Austria and then in France. Indeed, this dessert has become famous above all for its shape.

Someone theorized that the Neapolitan babà is probably nothing more than a slice of Kugelhopf soaked in rum for the Duke of Lorraine's pleasure. Can you believe it? It deserves to be tasted at least once just for the legends about its origin. So, try a Kugelhopf for Christmas!

Christamas chocolate pudding

Christmas Pudding is quintessentially English. An English Christmas classic which is usually prepared with raisins, candied fruit, beer, and a variety of spices. It seems that this type of dessert has been known in England since the sixteenth century. After Puritanism took over Christmas traditions, it came back into vogue in the 19th century thanks to Queen Victoria, who chose it as an English Christmas cake, as demonstrated in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Our chocolate version also includes chopped nuts, bread, and lemon zest: the right ingredients to make it phenomenal.

Christmas trunk or Buche de Noël

And then France's Bouche de Noël, better known elsewhere as Christmas Trunk. In France and the northern countries, the trunk is considered a good omen, which is why the Christmas cake has this shape. A log of wood that became a Christmas symbol and tradition. It was burned for the first time on the night of Christmas Eve, it continued to burn until Epiphany, and its ashes were kept for the whole year that followed because it was thought to have magical properties like those of favoring the harvest. Magical, just like Christmas!

And if you think all this chocolate is not enough, Cioccolatitaliani will be waiting for you, always in the same place, always with the same quality, for a more memorable Christmas.