Lewisburg Chocolate Festival

On Saturday, April 10th, the small, historic town of Lewisburg, West Virginia had it’s 4th Annual Chocolate Festival.  Located near the ever so posh and luxurious Greenbrier Resort, this festival drew quite  a large and diverse crowd – everyone from resort guests, to locals, to people like me – foodies willing to make the hour and a half drive.     

The day was absolutely jam packed with Chocolate Events – so many, in fact, that there was no possible way to do it all!  The draw for me was the Chocolate Bake Off…it was my main motivation for attending…because I LOVE contests!  I was part of a pretty good looking group of competitors, and yet, despite all that – I won!  I entered a version of the cake I made for my own birthday, except with a few twists.  I’ll tell you all about it at the end of this post!

A very clever way to make money for the town and it’s charities was the selling of "Tasting Tickets."  It was $1 per ticket, and each ticket bought you a different sample from a different business.  The Shoe Store? They handed out Chocolate Shoes. The local pub? Chocolate Martinis. The coffee shop? Espresso Brownies.  In total, there were 28 different tasting stations – and we sampled from over half of them!  A maximum of 15000 tickets were available for purchase, and believe it or not – every single one was sold IN ADVANCE.  Thank goodness I had the foresight to buy my tickets online earlier in the week!

For the kids, there was a free showing of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Storytime on the lawn, and some crazy bubble machines, balloon animals and chocolate themed mascots running around with free samples – everything to keep the little guys extremely excited!  For the adults here was a demonstration by the chefs of the Greenbrier, a Chocolate Mousse Eating Contest, Chocolate Brunch, the Bake Off…and well – an all around fun filled way to spend a day!

The 5th Annual Chocolate Festival will be on April 9th, 2011 – And I, for one, intend to be there.  How about you?

And now, for that cake I was bragging about…..

Chocolate Turtle Devils Food Genoise and Cheesecake Tower

Sorry kids, I’m not going to post the recipe.  It was long. It was complicated. It took 2 days to make.  There are steps within the steps!  But, as a description (and clues to where on my site you can find recipes to many of the components)…

A bottom layer of Devils Food Genoise, topped with a layer of Sea Salt Caramel and chocolate fudge frosting, followed by a full Vanilla Bean Cheesecake, another layer of fudge frosting, a thick layer of cut up Milky Way Candy Bars, More caramel, then another layer of the Devils Food.  All of this was iced with a Chocolate Turtle Whipped Buttercream Mousse, then piled full of giant chocolate curls.

This cake inspired me to make an even better version of it – and perhaps – if enough of you are drooling and BEG, I may just post a recipe for it next week! Think Dulce de Leche in the buttercream!