Chocolate Paradise

Each February, chocolate lovers converge on the Masonic Temple in Greenville for the annual Moosehead Lake Chocolate Festival, a fundraiser for the Moosehead Lake Chamber of Commerce. For a mere $10, you get a dozen tickets, each good for one serving of gourmet goodies like hand-dipped petit fours, chocolate ricotta-filled cannolis, and chocolate chip bread pudding. Children have their own sweet deal on the side: A special children’s corner allows little ones to sample goodies and make crafts while the adults graze their way across chocolate paradise.

“I think the cannoli is my favorite,” says Jennifer Freese, who traveled from Veazie to attend the festival. “It’s definitely worth the two-hour drive,” she says. Freese attended her first chocolate festival in 2009. “I hadn’t ever been to that area of Maine before, so it was a great excuse to visit.” Now she plans to make it an annual pilgrimage.

Lucy Johnson of Greenville also tries to attend every year. “I’d have to be sick or dead not to go,” she says. “It’s a nice break in the winter to get out of the house and do something different. Everybody loves chocolate and it’s for a good cause.”

For Diane Bartley, who has been a part of the event from the start, it has always been a family affair. Bartley is a professional caterer, and is also “from a pretty good cooking family,” so she counts on many of her relatives to pitch in. “My dad, Tony Bartley, had a chocolate fountain, so that was a big visual effect,” Bartley says. “My sister, Sue McNulty, has been there every year. She’s done Hawaiian brownies with pineapple and chocolate and a lovely glaze frosting on them. She also did a great chocolate carrot cake with a chocolate cream cheese frosting this past year.”

Bartley’s mom, Rowena “Pinkie” Bartley, serves as the event greeter; and her sister, Elaine Bartley, and family pitch in, too. “That’s just the way it is up here,” she says. “You just pull everybody in to help.”

On festival day, which will be held on Valentine’s Day in 2010, the basement of the Masonic Lodge will be packed to the gills, as the line of people always wraps up the stairs and around the corner—sometimes out the door. Is there a method to the madness?

Jennifer Freese suggests attendees take a lap around the tables to see everything that’s offered before digging in. “I start with six pieces,” she says. “That way if I really like something I can go back for seconds.”

Some of the chefs that participate in the event make the same signature sweet year after year while others stretch their creative culinary muscles and come up with something new to offer. The volunteers for the event make sure they have a selection of salty things like pretzels, chips, and cheese doodles on hand for people to eat in between their chocolate feasting. They also give attendees a take-home box. “We want them to get their fill,” Sue Hamer says, “but we don’t want them to get sick.”

Hamer, who cofounded the event, expects a whopping 3,500 pieces of chocolate this year. That quantity, she says, also comes with a quality presentation. “Diane [Bartley] doesn’t allow us to just throw our food onto a platter,” she says. “They have to be displayed in tiers with lace doilies, and it all looks beautiful.”

But not so beautiful that you can’t bear to eat it.