When you can’t hike in Slovenia, eat dessert

The story of our travels through Slovenia is really a story of desserts. We had planned on it being a story of hiking (with just a few desserts sprinkled in) as many people highly recommended we go to the Julian Alps. But the stormy weather showed us the error of our plans and thankfully pointed us to many sweet alternatives. We still haven’t seen the Julian Alps, so thick was the blanket of clouds covering them even as we stood at their base. But, Slovenia has proven to be our sweetest country yet.

Desserts began our first day in the mountain town of Bled where we padded our tummies with a good base layer of hiking food – the famous Bled cream cake (named after the town) and a chocolate hedgehog – before setting out to attempt a four day hut-to-hut trek through the mountains. Bad weather forced us to a cafe for beers on our way to the trail. Worse weather and the promise of more worse weather cancelled our hiking plans and kept us in Bled.

Thankfully, we got to do some walking in beautiful areas and visit an interesting museum devoted to beekeeping and another to traditional gingerbread making. And of course, in Slovenia all paths lead to dessert. Thus, we continued our confectionery indulgence with an enormous hot chocolate and chocolate crepes after our hike to a beautiful gorge, and Linhart cake and pineapple ice cream (served in a pineapple!) after our walk to the beekeeping museum. 

We were already anticipating desserts in Ljubljana as our guidebook actually mentioned a few places worth exploring. Tour guides on our food tour and city tour (two of the best tours we’ve had so far on our travels) both recommended their favorite ice cream shops, adding to our list. Ljubljana delights were tasted while meandering along the beautiful riverfront walk, exploring the vast outdoor market, or sipping cappuccinos at a chic cafe. Cakes, cookies, ice cream, and chocolates gave us a wonderful taste of the city’s sweets. Of course, between those tastes were other wonderful dishes and doses of Slovenian history and culture as well.

It is all good and well to sample a country’s sweets, but a few pieces of cake and a couple ice cream cones don’t really necessitate theming a whole blog post. A whole festival devoted to sweets, however, does. The highlight of our sweet Slovenia extravaganza – and, I might add, the event around which we planned all our time in Slovenia – was a day trip to the coastal town of Koper where the weekend festivities focused around the Sweet Istria festival. Doesn’t that sound enticing? Actually, we were quite skeptical. Very few people seemed to know about this festival. Even the tourist information office in Ljubljana reacted with, “Well, I got some email flier about it. I don’t really know.” Hmm. We decided to go for a day anyway, because how could we pass up a festival whose program specifically included a “Land of Chocolate?” We kept our expectations low, like, glorified elementary school bake sale low.

And, perhaps partly due to our expectations of finding a handful of booths operated by 5th graders, we were blown away by what we actually found. There were 500 sweets presented for tasting from over 100 vendor tents (all run by the well over 10 years old crowd) winding along the streets and covering a few town squares along the coast. The organizers recommended 8 tasting tickets per person (at 50 cents each, with each taste costing 1-2 tickets). We found 12 to be a more optimal amount, though 8 would probably be plenty if you were already planning a visit to the diabetes testing tent (no joke).

Tastes were described as 1-2 bites of a sweet. But, I’ve never been able to eat an entire dulce de leche filled croissant or seven heavenly fried donut holes in one or two bites. These were not tastes, friends; these were full desserts. A taste was what you were given if you weren’t sure you wanted to spend a coupon on something, and the vendor was certain that you should. Additionally, you could buy a larger portion of something for a few euros. After sampling several delicious desserts, we bought sweet pizza for lunch. In our defense, we initially thought the pizza was one of the few savory items around. Ha! Live and learn.

Sweets workshops (we took the chocolate tasting one even though it was delivered in Slovenian), a kids program, street performers, and a stage for bands rounded out the festivities. Epic dessert festival, friends. Epic.

Of course, I have to admit, now, as we come to the end of our clearly epic sweet Slovenia extravaganza, that our favorite find was not sweet at all, though it was used in a few desserts (and they were delicious). Our favorite new taste was pumpkin seed oil. Go. Find some… probably at Whole Foods. Try using it as a replacement for olive oil for dipping bread, or in a salad dressing. We loved its distinct, nutty flavor and vowed to include it in our list of future pantry essentials. Slovenia may be the land of sweets, but it is dripping with pumpkin seed oil, and we loved every drop!