Shell of a record; ChocoBrst home to nation's largest chocolate turtle

A lot of people could hang their hat on having the second-largest commercially available chocolate turtle in the nation.

At 2.5 pounds of layered butter-roasted pecans, homemade caramel, milk and dark chocolate, Jess Birkle’s delicious creation at ChocoBrst in Jasper stands on its own. Her smallest turtles weigh over 3 ounces and are already drawing people in from all over the region.

“So the turtles have become a big thing here. Like tour buses,” Jess explained. “People come in here every weekend, just from Evansville, to make sure that they get their turtles.”

There is a wall of chocolate turtles on one side of the ChocoBrst shop, ready for those returning chocolate connoisseurs.

Jess was happy with the 2.5-pound turtle she made. At least until Missy Helderman stopped in to the shop. Missy asked if she knew what the largest chocolate turtle on the market was.

“I was like, ‘Oh, don’t go down the road with me,'” Jess said.

Jess loves chocolate. She admits she eats the equivalent of one of her signature Brst Bars daily. She loves her job. It’s a joy making chocolate. But she’s also very competitive.

“I was like, well, what’s the first?” Jess asked Missy. “She’s like, ‘three and a half pounds.'”

Vermont’s Middlebury Sweets 3.5-pound chocolate turtle held the top spot.

“I was like, nah, I’m gonna be number one,” she said.

*Her standard chocolate turtle is about twice as large as any others on the market.*

You would think the creation of a really large chocolate turtle would simply mean piling more chocolate, pecans and caramel up, which it would be if you wanted an ugly turtle. But one look around the shop and you know Jess doesn’t do ugly. The Chocobrst chocolate experience is only compounded by the visual art of each decorated piece. The turtle had to be large and pretty.

“It was a lot more difficult than I thought,” Jess said.

She built a base and continued layering the key ingredients, with the final goal simply being the biggest.

“I’m trying to weigh it as I’m making it, to make sure that we get the pounds. But you layer it, and then you have to let it cool,” she explained.

Try moving a pound of soft chocolate, caramel and buttered pecans to a scale without cracking the top layer of chocolate. “That’s not easy,” Jess said.

But, layer after layer, over six hours, that little turtle grew. Like a goldfish only limited by the size of its aquarium, at nearly a foot in diameter, Jess finally stopped when she realized it wouldn’t fit in her largest package. Slowly, she rounded the bottom so it would fit.

But, at 4.7 pounds, the Grand Brst Turtle sits perched on a platter in a pretty package in the middle of the shop for sale, the second-place turtle now in a solid third.

“It was quite the feat,” Jess said.