Colorado Chocolate Festival: cocoa-bean heaven
What you might expect at the second annual Colorado Chocolate Festival is chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate. You'll get that, of course. What you might not expect are the wine tastings, music and sheer fun of what Westword Magazine has called the area's Best Food Fair.
First, the good, gooey, sweet stuff: At Denver's huge Merchandise Mart on Mother's Day weekend, May 8-10, you'll find "60,000 square feet of Chocolate Heaven." More than 150 vendors will be serving everything from toffee and truffles to brownies, cake, fudge and much else. If it's made from the cocoa bean and sugar, you'll find it there.
And you'll want to taste the many free samples and enjoy the cooking demos, chocolate body painting, fudge-off and the wedding cake competition. This year, there will the Truffle Trifecta, with first-, second- and third-place prizes.
You'll probably want to know who makes the Best Brownie — and the Best Toffee, the Best Fudge and the Best Chocolate Mold. And who is going to be the Colorado Chocolate Queen.
If you need a break from all that tasting and walking from booth to booth, you can relax and listen to music playing from two stages or to the festival's speakers. Special guests this year will be Julie Pech, The Chocolate Therapist, and KWGN's Chris Parente, who will interview Denise Nickerson from the original Willy Wonka film.
Tickets to the festival are $7 for adults, $3 for kids.
The wine tasting and preview gala on Friday night from 7-10 ($12 admission) will be best appreciated by adults, but on Saturday and Sunday, there will be plenty for kids to do: carnival games, chocolate-themed prizes, cake walks, clowns on stilts, circus acts and face painting.
Whenever you come, this great event is for everyone — because who doesn't love chocolate?
- by David Zindell, Denver Reporter for HelloMetro
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