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ChocolateFest: Follow the chocolate chip road

Chocolate carving is just one of many tasteful events taking place in the Chocolate Tent at ChocolateFest this weekend. File photo.

BURLINGTON -- If you have a craving for chocolate, Burlington’s annual ChocolateFest can help. The festival runs May 28-31 in Burlington. In addition to lots of ooey, gooey chocolate-tasting opportunities, live music and rides, the festival also offers chocolate sculpting, a chocolate-eating contest, a chocolate chef challenge and the Chocolate Olympics.

VIDEO Chef Meltdown competition

“We had over 43,000 (people) last year and we had perfect weather. God bless us, if we have perfect weather again, we can easily exceed that,” said Linda Fellenz, the festival’s marketing director and owner of LF Fellenz Green Development.

A popular southern Wisconsin festival, the event draws chocolate lovers from across the Midwest and beyond. Nestles, which operates a plant in Burlington, tapped artist Amber Jean of Montana to carve a 14- by 17-foot chocolate sculpture, inspired by the “Wizard of Oz” for this year. This is the second year Jean has carved for Chocolate Fest.

Jean isn’t allowed to reveal anything about what the sculpture will look like in advance, but this much is known: It will weigh over 1,000 pounds and require more than 300 hours of labor. Jean arrived mid-May to begin work. But what happens to all that chocolate art at the end of the festival?

“They can’t officially allow people to eat it because it’s no longer factory sterilized. But one year, after it was knocked over with a forklift, a group of kids ran up and broke pieces off,” Jean said. “I’m not sure what will be done with it this year.”

There’s more to the festival than salivating over Jean’s creation. Below is a roundup of this year’s festival activities.

For a list of events see the full story in the May 26, 2010 e-edition of Weekender HERE.