let’s organise the chocolate stash! – day in the life vlog (in foggy Venice Italy)

Today I had an early shift at work in Venice’s thick winter fog. Afterwards I felt a great need to stay warm at home to organise and create some things. Time to sort out the (almost overflowing) chocolate stash and do some seasonal baking, eating some delicious things along the way, of course. Let’s go!

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Chapters:
00:00 – let’s have breakfast
00:59 – chat and catch up
02:42 – organising the chocolate stash
11:35 – let’s bake some fruit crumble bars
14:32 – dinner, dessert, and relaxing

THANKS FOR WATCHING!

x

Yeah My loves how we we doing how are we feeling it’s a it’s a very happy Saturday with me today just finished work it was a bright and early start this morning um Venice is also in kind of full spooky foggy mode today which I love um you don’t get to see it that

Much in the the summer obviously because the weather is usually really nice in the winter when you get these really um dense foggy days I actually really like it Venice is a place that looks very good in the fog it’s still colorful it’s still beautiful despite the fact you can

Barely see you don’t hand held out in front of you but I am finished work for this morning because despite the fog despite the cold the gelato still sells folks I’m home I stopped by a new kind of favorite place that we have in Venice at the moment for food it’s called Uh

Meat Lab or the atled Meat Lab at least I think that’s how it’s pronounced they have this chicken kebab that I really like it’s kind of somewhere between your classic kind of doner kebab and uh green hero like somewhere in between is really really good they also do pulled pork and

Pastrami and lots of kind of other um globally inspired food that isn’t typically Italian and had a real craving for like roast chicken but I’m home now and I would very much like to organize all of the chocolate I have now that probably sounds ridiculous but there

Really really is a lot I also want to do a little bit of baking this afternoon nothing particularly heavy in terms of um actual recipe content but just to use up some ingredients we have and to make something nice to have to eat in the house obviously let me show you the

State of this chocolate cupboard at the moment so this is um the chocolate cupboard now this is this was supposed to be where we were keeping things to keep them organized instead yeah so if you guys haven’t watched the hot chocolate review you can find that on the channel but I still

Have a few of those to finish as you can see including the enormous bag of marshmallows and the chocolate orange baking drops that I got from the same company as well and I just feel it’s about time to have a little look at this because some of these have been opened

And taste tested some of them have been started some of them I haven’t even properly looked at yet and I’ve forgotten honestly some of what is in here and there are many chocolate reviews still to be done many just to be eaten and enjoyed but let’s let’s do

Something about it so some of the stuff in here honestly I have no idea what this is for example we have this some some random extra dark chocolate in here uh which I have absolutely no idea what’s going on with so let me set that to one side there’s a whole load of

Worther Originals here which I believe came in the box that uh the lovely Josh of it’s Josh eats sent me still to get round to these because we have them in the UK so I know exactly how good these are otherwise there’s a l surprise thing

I have no idea um we also have a few of these random perog pieces of chocolate that I believe we got as a kind of gift before Christmas we got like a big box of them now we just have a few left over clearly all the ones that I am supposed

To eat because it’s all the dark ones this is actually from the Ritter sport Advent calendar it’s now as I filmed this the uh 17th of February let me just eat this to get this out of the way today to be honest we also have some slightly ridiculous

Stuff like these popping candy chocolate biscuit things that clearly we bought at uh this kind of Asian festival that was not too far away from us um I think they’re Korean but they’re in you know still going to be okay until October this year so just keep those to one side

Otherwise we have uh rum raisin and I think hazelnut yeah rum hazut and raisin richer Sport Bar had this before pretty good probably just keep it for snacking purposes we also have in here very unfortunately still the Mr Beast chocolate I feel bad saying that because

It was actually a gift but if you guys haven’t seen the review yet don’t bother to be honest don’t bother we also have uh just some classic nauy dark chocolate I’m actually going to move this to my bacon cupboard because this is more a kind of baking chocolate than a snacking chocolate

Decent quality but I have lots of other things clearly to be getting through first so let me set that to one side the Mr Beast stuff honestly if I never see this again it’s not a problem we have some stuff that I do want to review including lots of delicious looking

Chocolato the Moda now this is a sicilian thing and it’s basically super rough ground chocolate so it’s not kind of smooth and melting in the mouth it’s almost like a Sandy cookie dough kind of texture and it’s really really good so I have a pistachi one in here I have a

Vanilla I think I have another one but I’m going to put this into a kind of pile of stuff to be reviewed for you lovely folks we have a couple of these blonde Bona bars so this one actually has H coffee in it like roasted Coffee

Bean pieces in it and this one’s just a classic blonde chocolate otherwise known as caramelized white chocolate the coffee one I think I will just keep for snacking purposes again and this one maybe for a recipe at some point I have a box of omnom here which I believe has

Been mostly eaten ah yes so this was actually the winter collection from last year that I got on discount um this awesum I think around November kind of time and it contains their spiced white caramel chocolate the milk and cookies bar which is clearly empty and also the

Dark chocolate and raspberry ah so there’s only actually a little bit of chocolate left in this one iow me to take care of that I have some interesting flavored chocolate bars from a brand I’ve never tried before here called Alro Marcato a dark chocolate with pomegranate which I’ve never seen

Before a milk chocolate but a vegan milk chocolate with coconut something I have had before and something I’m a big fan of but you don’t really find it very much in Italy and also a dark chocolate with turmeric and pepper this one I found really really interesting whether

Those flavors can hold up to dark chocolate and just how they’re going to taste so this is definitely one that I would like to review so I will keep it in a little separate box this one honestly I bought it with the idea that it was something different and I’m a little bit

Terrified of it so this is dark chocolate like 58% dark chocolate with a banana filling there’s only 2% banana and the rest of it is like added flavoring so I think I already know that this is going to taste like that very specific um chest infection medicine you know the

Bright yellow stuff that they give to kids um and I’m not a huge fan of that fake banana smell so this was a great idea when I bought it I am actually quite scared of it I also have in here some Christmas presents I received including a gingerbread milk chocolate

From Coco which is a brand in Edinburgh I also got a lovely cold boot coffee bar um as part of the same gift but that one is already gone I got these instead from my parents over Christmas one is a dark chocolate with cranin Hazelnut and another Ginger and lime dark chocolate

Maru is a brand I’ve only tried once and I was very very impressed so I’m very excited to try this one but these I’m afraid people are all for Kelly’s personal enjoyment pile a somewhat let down of a bar I have to say vetto is a bar uh sorry a chocolate

Company here in Italy and they have made some great stuff that I’ve been really impressed by but this one personally was just a little bit me it’s a salted white chocolate with pistachios and almonds it mostly just tastes like a slightly salted crunchy white chocolate the pistachio and the Almond don’t

Really have much flavor in my opinion it’s still nice it just doesn’t taste much of pistachio um so happy to finish it but it’s not as kind of wow as I thought it was going to be I also have the remainders of the Ikea chocolate bars which you guys may have already

Seen the review for which never to eating them at some point I also have some leftover Christmas chocolate here these are pistachio kins that I got as a good for Christmas I’ve eaten a couple and I might have a couple more of these right now but we’ll put on the top of my

To be eaten pile I have a couple of Kit Kats in here and I don’t really know why I know that this one was part of the box that the lovely Josh sent to me from Canada and it’s basically identical to the British one I also have just like a

Normal British Kit Kat here and I don’t know why actually it’s not a British Kit Kat because it’s got everything written in Italian on the back so someone must have just bought a four finger your kit kat oh know I have these two bars from

Beta 5 you guys the review for this is coming on either Wednesday or Thursday next week and I think you’re going to enjoy it that’s all I’m going to say afterwards I have a whole collection of uh Pena chocolate lollies and things that we made as part of a chocolate making

Class that we took in December including one that says oh high I don’t know if you can read but that’s the Patriotic chocolate Molly who’s going to eat it I don’t know and finally I have the remainders of this Venezuelan dark chocolate from Mast Chi which I

Also got when we were in peruja back in December absolutely gorgeous Venezuelan uh chocolate or Venezuelan cocoa is some of my favorite tasting cocoa that I’ve ever had so far at least anyway and I love to pick it up when I can so this one I’ve been eating slowly and savoring

I had some yesterday but I need to not eat all in one sitting ideally this mostly just needs to be organized into what is to be eaten and when help but before we get into it let’s have that much needed energy break admittedly still full but so so much better everything that’s already

Opened or individual in here stuff to be reviewed here my own stuff and either shared or not my stuff over here much happier with this now let’s do some baking so what I want to bake with is this it’s basically a jam or a conserve made with Quint which is known

As Mele coton or sometimes M konata here in Italy we got this from a shop not too far away from where we live first I need to kind of taste this to understand what it is I’m making and by understand what I’m making I don’t mean just necessarily

The flavor but also the consistency of this because God why are the men never here when things are to be opened oh my God okay spoiler when you can’t open a Jar Jam like a spoon or the handle of something under this bit and just literally wedge it open like a

Crowbar it’s probably not that much of a of a kind of Life Hack That not that many people would know about though this is exactly why I wanted to open this up and check the consistency before I started making recipe with it there are jams that are really kind of liquid and

Therefore are fine to be baked and not just used as like a topping or a filling for something but this looks like it’s like a solid it’s like it’s literally solid it smells amazing but let me taste also because obviously if something is solid and already super super sweet you

Don’t want to bake it to then reduce it even further do you know what I mean that way you’re going to be reducing both the amount of liquid to make it even more solid and you’re going to be reducing the amount of liquid therefore making it even more sugary and

Sweet God that’s good though so the ingredients are basically just the fruit sugar and glucose syrup added to it while it isn’t that sweet that texture is going to be interesting to work with I have a feeling this is going to be much better as I already suspected for some kind of

Fruit crumble bars with almost like a short red base rather than as a pie filling this is a pie filling I think would have a really weird texture if I reduced it down even more and I would hate for it to become like something that if you

Threw it at the wall it would bounce back I may give this a stir like take it out put it in a separate Bowl H give it a stir to see what the texture becomes like then and spread it on top of some shortbread to bake it with a little crumbled

Topping see what happens also I don’t want to use the whole thing in case it turns out shy because it wasn’t me to paid for this let’s see what we can Do He