
The EPCOT International Festival of the Arts is back, offering an exciting mix of visual art, live performances, and—of course—delicious food. Running now through February 24th, this fest is a sweet treat for dessert lovers, with special offerings that are as visually stunning as they are tasty. From rich chocolate to colorful creations, here are three must-try desserts to indulge in during your visit. (In addition to Hannah’s recent Figment findings!)
Taiyaki from Japan | $6.75
First up is my personal favorite – Taiyaki. This is a warm and crispy pastry filled with sweet red bean paste. This is a returning festival favorite, with this year’s version including the extra pastry border around the fish shape, some whipped topping and blueberry boba on the side.
There’s a comforting element to this pastry. The buttery, crispy bite into the lightly sweetened filling is just lovely. The “frosting” on the side is essentially Cool Whip; light and airy. The blueberry boba is a nice touch. Although, I’m just fine eating the pastry on its own. We can chalk up those colorful sides to simply adding an artistic flair. If you haven’t tried red bean before, give this one a go!
Escargot en Chocolat from France | $9.75
This one may not be for everyone (just like actual Escargot), but this treat pleasantly surprised us! I mean, look how adorable it is:
Contrary to what one might assume, there are no snails in this dessert. Just chocolate! This one is described as chocolate mousse flourless cake, citrus coulis, almond-chocolate coating, and dark chocolate decoration. Imagine a Ferrero Rocher chocolate, filled with a punchy citrus center — sort of reminiscent to a chocolate orange. The more bites we took, the more we enjoyed this ball of hazelnutty goodness. The flavors were surprising but balanced out really well. We noticed some crunchy hazelnut wafer bits within the mousse, too!
Black Cocoa Brownie from World Showcase Promenade | $6.50
Found at the new Fictional Victuals booth near the entrance to World Showcase (heading towards Mexico), don’t miss this under the sea-inspired dessert featuring ube ice cream. In case you haven’t heard: ube is Filipino purple yam which possesses a lightly sweetened nutty flavor; almost like vanilla bean.
A+ for the 20,000 Leagues-inspired presentation. But really, this one is DELISH! The dense black cocoa brownie was decadent, made with dark chocolate. The coral tuile piece is just for show, it didn’t have any flavor, and the white chocolate shell is a cute touch. The green sponge cake had a lemon-lime Fruity Pebbles flavor to it. I couldn’t get enough of the sponge cake and ube ice cream together! In an ideal world, there would be at least twice as much ube ice cream for the cakes to soak up. But I’ll take this for now!