Chocolate. You gotta love it. You can eat it, cook with it, even snort it. It's good at every meal. Even breakfast, as I discovered on a recent trip to Antwerp.

The Belgians enjoy a special breakfast treat called Hagelslag. These are basically chocolate sprinkles put on toast. The heat of the toast melts the bottom sprinkles, making a nice gooey mess, while the top sprinkles scatter all over the plate. This gives you lots of tasty scrounging once you've finished your chocolate toast. I brought a box home to my six-year-old son and as you can imagine, it was quite a hit.

Now before anyone gets all self-righteous about diet and nutrition in the comments section, let me just say that I don't give the little nipper chocolate toast every morning, and fine Belgian chocolate is a helluva lot more natural than the average kids breakfast cereal. And he never eats fast food. That's right. Never.

(We'll see how long that lasts once he's older and has pocket money)

Hagelslag comes in different varieties and the original recipe was Dutch, although I've only tried one Belgian brand. There are several competing brands and some come out with white chocolate and chocolate shavings rather than sprinkles. So if you're passing through the Low Countries, pick up some Hagelslag. Your kids will thank you for it.


Don't miss the rest of my series: Lowdown on the Low Countries.

Coming up next: Preserved human flesh at Amsterdam's Tattoo Museum!

This trip was partially funded by Tourism Antwerp and Cool Capitals. All opinions, however, are my own.


Photo courtesy Mtcv.

Filed under: Food and Drink, Europe, Belgium