A chocolate shop named Chouquette Chocolates in Bethseda is now selling chocolate-covered cicadas. According to the shop owner, they are super delicious.
The chocolates are flying off the shelf like hotcakes. The shop has already accumulated a ten days backlog of orders from their customers for these chocolatey cicadas.
"When you combine the chocolate, the cinnamon, and the nuttiness of the bugs, it really gives you that holiday feeling of when you're walking around a big city and they're roasting nuts on the sidewalk, that cinnamon smell, it's really what it tastes like," - Sarah Dwyer, Owner of the shop
Cicadas have come out of the underground for the first time this Spring in the United States after 17 years. They are flying like swarms everywhere. The employees of the store gather their bounty of cicadas from a thicket of trees behind their shop.
Employees place their stock of cicada inside a freezer wrapped in paper bags. The subzero temperature slowly puts the broods to sleep, and they die of the cold eventually.
The store owner cleans the dead cicadas by giving them a thorough boil in the water. An air fryer is used next to make the boiled cicadas crisp before coating them with oil.
The crispy fried and oiled-up cicadas are sprinkled with cinnamon and then dipped into milk or dark chocolate. Sarah Dwyer has learned this technique of dipping from Paris in a pastry school.
"I did go to pastry school in Paris to learn my dipping technique. I'm pretty sure no one thought I would be using it on cicadas," - Sarah Dwyer, Owner of the shop
Cicadas are low-fat insects with a good source of protein. But not everyone will prefer to eat insects even if they are covered with chocolates. Some might even cringe at the very thought of eating them.
Sarah Dwyer hopes the word of delicious cicadas spread wide and far so that people can get more comfortable with them. She thinks the popularity of the chocolate cicadas will make people familiar with the type of protein and hopes people are more open to the delicacy when the broods appear next time in 2038.
"There's not enough protein to go around, and I think, I really do think that in 2038, people will not think twice about eating a bug at all," - Sarah Dwyer, Owner of the shop
Suppose you do not like to eat insects but want to enjoy the bugs, no worries. The Maryland shop also sells cicada-themed chocolates that do not contain any insects in them. It serves as a better option for people who fancy enjoying buggy chocolate without having to eat the insects.
What do you think of the chocolate? Would you give the high-protein insect a try?