SALEM, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — Salem’s So Sweet Chocolate and Ice Sculpture Festival will take place this weekend from Friday to Sunday for the 22nd year.
The festival will feature chocolate and other sweet treats from local shops, a Chocolate Hearts Challenge with prizes and an ice sculpture installation with almost 30 different art works around downtown Salem.
Kelsey is the manager and baker at Kakawa Chocolate House in Salem, one of the 35 businesses that will be at the festival this weekend. She shared some details about the food her shop will be bringing to the chocolate festival.
One of the most popular items Kakawa sells, and what will be available at the festival this weekend, is chocolate-covered bacon, said Kelsey.
“We have some thick-cut bacon that we toss in brown sugar then add some bourbon to that. We cook it until it’s nice and crispy, then we dip it in our 80% house-blend chocolate,” explained Kelsey. The response from customers “is huge,” she added. “It’s one of our most popular items, and we go through a lot of it every week.”
Describing the process behind this somewhat unusual chocolate food item, Kelsey said that Kakawa wanted to present people at the festival with an uncommon sweet treat. “Well, we wanted something chocolate, of course, but something different, something that you don’t see very often. So we thought, ‘Why not try it out?’”
Kelsey added that “it has bacon, so how can it be bad?”
Kakawa’s special chocolate treat can be found at the Salem’s So Sweet Festival, alongside dozens of other local businesses who will be offering chocolate treats over the weekend.
Salem’s So Sweet was organized by Salem Main Streets and the Salem Chamber of Commerce, and was sponsored in part by the Salem Art Commission along with funding from Destination Salem. The festival begins this Friday, Feb. 9 and runs until Feb. 11.
WBZ's Carl Stevens (@CarlWBZ) reports.
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