Dessert-aholic Heaven: Helsinki’s Karl Fazer Cafe

Helsinki, Finland • fazer.com

As a chocolate lover, one of my favorite places so far in Finland is this wonderful place called the Karl Fazer Cafe.  Fazer is one of Finland’s largest chocolate companies, similar to Belguim’s Godiva or America’s Ghirardelli.  It was founded by Karl Fazer in 1891 when he opened a cafe in Helsinki.  Today Fazer has almost 1,400 restaurants in 7 countries and their products are sold to 27 countries.  Their flagship store, right off the Esplanade Park in downtown Helsinki, is fantastic.  Complete with Fazer’s famous hot chocolate, a large selection of desserts, ice cream, and all different kinds of Fazer chocolate, it is like a dessert-aholic’s cafe dream come true! 

You can buy their chocolates in little personal, bite-sized pieces in bulk, which is awesome!

Check out all of these kinds!  Particularly delicious are the Fazermints, a mint cream covered by dark chocolate; Geisha, hazelnut milk chocolate that I mentioned yesterday; and Dumle, milk chocolate and soft toffee.   

Their dessert case was incredible to look at.  Everything was beautifully prepared and looked delicious (although I didn’t know what half of the items were since I obviously cannot read Finnish). 

After asking the waitress what a few items meant, I decided to treat myself to a more traditional Finnish dessert with a twist – the Fazer 120.  It is kind of like a layered cake – a graham cracker crust, a creamy milk chocolate layer, more graham cracker, a fruit flavored mousse, then topped with cloudberry fruit jelly, which is a Finnish berry similar to a raspberry. The top was adorned with a decorative piece of dark chocolate.  It was totally different and so delicious.