One of the things we love most about travelling is discovering the food traditions that really belong to a place, and our recent time in Stockholm gave us the perfect excuse to properly experience one of Sweden’s best-known rituals: fika.

At first glance, fika can look like coffee and cake. But in Stockholm, it quickly becomes obvious that it is much more than that.

It is a proper pause in the day. A chance to sit down, have a coffee, enjoy something sweet and actually stop for a while.

Naturally, the pastry side of things got our attention straight away.

Stockholm is full of beautiful bakeries and cafés serving cinnamon buns, cardamom buns, pastries and plenty of really good coffee. Cardamom in particular was one of the flavours we kept coming back to. It is warm, aromatic and works brilliantly with butter, pastry, coffee and chocolate.

And, as you can imagine, there was plenty of research involved.

What we really liked was the balance. So many of the pastries were rich and indulgent without being overly sweet. You could actually taste the spice, the butter, the nuts and the coffee rather than everything simply tasting of sugar.

That is something we think about a lot at The Canny Chocolate Company too.

Whether we are developing a new chocolate, putting together a tasting or teaching one of our workshops, we are always looking at how flavours work together and how to keep that balance.

Stockholm has certainly given us plenty to think about.

Coffee and chocolate are an obvious pairing, but add in cardamom, cinnamon, brown butter, hazelnut, almond and caramel and suddenly there are lots of directions you can go in.

Travel is often where some of our best ideas start. Not because we want to recreate exactly what we have eaten somewhere else, but because trying food in a different place makes you think differently about ingredients.

Sometimes it is a flavour. Sometimes it is a way something is presented. Sometimes it is simply the atmosphere of a café that makes you think, “there is something in this.”

And that is probably what we liked most about fika.

There is something very Canny about the idea of stopping, enjoying something properly and sharing it with other people. Our workshops have never just been about making chocolate. They are about learning something new, tasting, chatting, laughing and having a bit of time away from everything else.

So after plenty of coffee, more than a few pastries and some very serious cardamom-bun research, we are leaving Stockholm with a few ideas bubbling away.

We are not giving too much away just yet, but do not be too surprised if a little Scandinavian inspiration finds its way into something at Canny in the future.

Preferably involving chocolate.

And definitely involving pastry.