Temple Bar Chocolate Festival and ticket giveaways

Stop eating chocolate now folks and save your chocolate cravings, for this is the ultimate experience in chocolate tasting, learning, sampling and hogging…the Temple Bar Chocolate Festival is happening in Dublin on the Halloween weekend. A whole three days of chocolate fun, I can’t wait! The festival includes some interesting workshops, demonstrations, talks, family events and, most important of all, tastings and a chance to buy lots of lovely chocolate.

The schedule looks like this:

Friday 30th Octooober

Truffle Making workshop with Gillian Walsh at 10.30am and 12.00pm for one hour in The Gallery of Photography. Here you can learn how to roll your own chocolate truffles, box them up and take them home. Or eat them right there, whatever takes your fancy Tickets for this are €10, concessions €8.

Chocolate Tasting Workshops with ChocONeill at 1.30pm and 2.45pm in The Clarence for 45 minutes. This will be a brief introduction to molecular gastronomy, as well as an exploration of various chocolate textures and ingredients. And tasting of plain single origin and single plantation chocolates. Mmm. Tickets €8, concessions €5.

Chocolate Beauty Treatments with Eavanna Breen of Akina Beauty Clinic in The Clarence 5pm-6pm. Beauty tips on how to make a dry skin mask with cocoa as the main ingredient, describing the beneficial properties of cocoa. This session is free but booking is essential.

Chocohol Tasting with Reuben Gray of the Irish Craft Brewers at 7pm for ninety minutes in The Turk’s Head. Here you can learn how to brew chocolate stout, taste, compare and contrast some established chocolate stouts such as Young’s Double Chocolate Stout and Molly’s Chocolate Stout. Also available will be chocolate Wheat Beer and a Choctail created by The Turks Head especially for this event. Ooh yummy. Tickets for this event are a bargain at €5 - over 18s only.

Willie Wonka and The Chocolate Factory. What chocolate festival would be complete without a showing of the most famous chocolate movie ever? The 1971 film Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory will be shown on the big screen in Meeting House Square at 7pm on Friday evening. Ben and Jerrys will provide the FREE ice cream, their Fairtrade Chocolate Macadamia. Delicious! The film screening is free but you must book a ticket in advance. We have a few tickets to give away to this screening too, so keep reading…

For families A children’s workshop to create their own box of chocolates suitable for 5-11year olds will take place at 2pm for ninety minutes in Smock Alley Theatre. Children can make their own decorative box for chocolates, play games and fill their boxes with chocolates. This is free but booking is essential.

Saturday 31st Octooober

Cooking Demonstration with celebrated French chocolatier, Benoit Lorge in The Morgan Hotel at 10.30am and 12pm for an hour. Mr. Lorge will create his unique chocolates for you giving tips for truffles, pralines, creme de cassis among others. Tickets for this are €10, concessions €8.

Fact Vs Fiction when it comes to eating chocolate! Practising dietician, Sinéad Shanley will reveal the reality of eating chocolate in a science-based discussion followed by sampling of chocolate of varying cocoa contents and a Q and A session. This takes place in New Theatre for an hour at 1pm, free but booking is essential.

For families:Let’s Bake, a children’s hands-on workshop at 10am in Smock Alley Theatre teaching 7-11 year olds how to make double bar rice-crispy cakes using fair trade ingredients and teaching them about ethical trading policies and farming practices. This event is free but booking is essential.

For families:The Chocolate Caravan, a drumming walkabout with MaSamba Samba School beginning at 1.15pm in Temple Bar Square and winding it’s way to The Button Factory by 2.15pm. Free event and no booking necessary.

From Bean To Bar! -Willie Harcourt-Cooze talks in The Button Factory at 2.30pm about Venezuelan Black, his 100% cacao bar harvested from his family farm and manufactured in his own chocolate factory in Devon. There will also be a complimentary chocolate fondue. Tickets are €15, concessions €10.

Divine Fair Trade Chocolate cooking demo in The Morgan Hotel at 4pm, Divine Chocolate’s David Greenswood-Haigh will share some trivia, history and origin of chocolate and chocolate evaluation as he provides a cooking demonstration. You’ll also learn about cocoa farming and how the beans are grown and harvested. Tickets are free but again booking is essential.

Chocolate Inspired Book and Poetry Reading in the New Theatre at 5.30pm for an hour. Free event, booking not necessary.

Sunday 1st Novemmmber

Chocolate Sundae! There will be a chocolate fair on Meeting House Square 10.30am-4.30pm with a huge variety of chocolate artisan producers and chocolatiers. An empty stomach and a chocolate craving are probably prerequisites to spending an hour or two here

Sweet Treats: the day will be filled with chocolate-based foods, a chocolate fountain, chocolate pastries and lots more. There will also be a range of entertainment during the day at Meeting House Square including a Barbershop Quartet, face painting and a battle between The Milk Chocolate Goddess and the Hot Chilli Devils!

Ben & Jerrys will be giving away double dips of Fairtrade chocolate and vanilla ice cream and chocolate covered Macadamia nuts. Yum!

You can see the full event listing here. To pre-book tickets for events please call the Culture Line on 01 888 3610 or call into the Box office in the Temple Bar Cultural Information Centre.

As if all of that was not enough to keep you highly entertained, amused, educated and full for the weekend, Culch.ie, with huge thanks to the Temple Bar Cultural Trust, have some tickets to give away for selected events. We have:

• 2 pairs of tickets to Willie Wonka on Friday at 7pm, Meeting House Square
• 1 pair of tickets to the Chocohol Tasting on Friday at 7pm, The Turk’s Head

Please leave a comment below with which event you’d like to go to and we’ll choose winners next week

If you are thinking of taking some photos, TBCT are also running a photo competition with dinner for 4 at Gallagher’s Boxty House as the prize-all you need do is visit their Flickr page, make sure you upload your photos of the Chocolate Festival and send them to the Chocolate Festival Group. And then hope that you win a yummy dinner

By the way, if anyone spots someone behaving anything like this around the chocolate…please take videos!