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?