Sweet Barcelona

I'm back from Barcelona!

The city is beautiful! Full of genious buildings, great street life, beaches, mountains, cool stores, monuments, historic places, and more, much more. And the food, oh the food... Barcelona and all the Catalunia region have some of the best chefs and restaurants in the world (Adrià's El Bulli is probably the most famous).

And what about their patisseries? This city is the home of a few of my favourite pastry chefs, and it was the perfect opportunity to go drool over their trendy patisseries. I was a happy (and well fed) girl these days! Wanna come on a tour of the sweet side of Barcelona?

Let's start with the big Oriol Balaguer, he's probably the pastry king in Spain right now. He wrote one of the greatest pastry books ever and his shop looked more like a jewelry store instead. Everything was so darn perfect! I bought a box with 4 gigantic vanilla financiers. Lovely...

Next stop was Enric Rovira, a master chocolatier. Another jewelry store like shop, with pretty and modern packaging and cool flavours.

Almond, milk chocolate and mostard or wasabi, white chocolate and peas? Oh well, I'll take the saffron ones instead... Would you look at the color of that saffron ganache?

Another chocolate heaven was Xocoa. One wall completely covered with different flavours bars. But it was too hot to carry chocolate around so I decided for a basil-coffee chocolate chip cookie. Interesting stuff...

So after that generous quantity of sugar I decided to go to the famous market in the city center, La Boqueria.

I though it would be a good opportunity to buy some fruit and some healthier things. Yeah, right... Of course I found fruit, but my eyes were more interested in the chuches, gomitas, frutos secos y otras porquerias...

Everywhere I looked there were gummies! They're very popular in Spain, so if you live by the rule "In Rome be a Roman", well then in Spain... eat gummies!

Right next to the market, in probably the most popular street La Rambla there's another iconic pastry shop: Escribà. They're most well known for their jewelry made out of sugar.

Caramel rings that you can eat?! That gotta be better than diamond ones, right?

I didn't buy a caramel ring, but if I had bought it I would probably propose to Carles Mampel, the head behind my absolute favourite pastry shop from this trip: Bubò.

I'm in love with him, with his style and with his... pistachio macarrons.

What about his Opera Cake (remember this?) on a stick, covered with chocolate and crunchy bits? Carles will you marry me?

So now back home I think I'll have to start considering cutting down on the sugar to compensate for the enormous amount I had last week. I'll start with these spanish olives I brought back with me. Even thought they're almond brittle covered in white and dark chocolate, they're still olives. Right? And olives are like vegetables, right? Right???