In Italy you know Winter has finally arrived when, upon entering a café in the mid-afternoon, the comforting scent of hot chocolate and whipped cream embraces you like an old friend. Now, hot chocolate in Italy is a serious thing: thick and dark, sometimes flavored with hazelnuts, mint or vanilla, it is something you eat, rather than drink. With or without cream topping it, with or without cookies, hot chocolate is the ultimate comfort treat during the cold, snow-filled days of the Italian chilliest season. As a Piedmontese, I am happy of it: hot chocolate, tradition says, became popular in the country when Emanuele Filiberto symbolically offered a cup of it to Turin, after having moved the capital of the Savoia’s Duchy from Chambéry to the piedmontese city, in the 1563.
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