Making chocolate in the city of chocolate is a predictable activity, but it's also a genuinely fun one — especially if you choose the right workshop.

The Chocolate Line on Simon Stevinplein runs workshops where Dominique Persoone (or his team) guides you through making pralines from scratch. You'll learn tempering, filling moulds, and creating ganaches. It takes about two hours and you leave with a box of your own chocolates. Book well in advance — they're popular.

Dumon offers smaller, more intimate workshops in their production kitchen. The focus is on traditional Belgian praline techniques — hand-dipping, piping, and decorating. It's less theatrical than The Chocolate Line but arguably more educational.

Choco-Story, the chocolate museum on Wijnzakstraat, includes a demonstration as part of the museum visit. It's shorter and less hands-on than a workshop, but you get a good overview of how chocolate is made, from bean to praline.

What you'll learn: The key to good chocolate is tempering — heating and cooling the chocolate to exact temperatures so the cocoa butter crystallises properly. Well-tempered chocolate has a snap when you break it and a glossy surface. Badly tempered chocolate is dull, soft, and crumbly.

Belgian chocolate tradition is centred on the praline — a filled chocolate with ganache, cream, caramel, or nut filling. The word 'praline' was coined by a Brussels pharmacist named Neuhaus in 1912. Before that, filled chocolates existed but had no name.

Budget €35-60 per person for a workshop. Book through the chocolatiers' websites or at the tourist office.