Looking for a sweet spot for Valentine’s Day? Frankfort can fill that need

Many are familiar with Tombstone, the Town too Tough to Die, but how many know about Frankfort, the Town too Sweet to Diet?

If it was hard to stay out of Boot Hill in the Southern Arizona town, it’s virtually impossible to stay out of the candy store, ice cream parlor and bakeries in the Central Kentucky city. If that holds true any time of the year, it’s particularly so with Valentine’s Day just around the corner.

This list and guide offers some of the best dessert spots Frankfort has to offer for a sweet tooth.

Rebecca Ruth: Bourbon balls, chocolate-covered strawberries and more

For starters, Frankfort is home to a chocolate factory that even Willy Wonka would be proud of. The modest white cottage with red shutters and awning in the shadow of the state capitol building seems an unlikely setting as the world headquarters for one of Kentucky’s most popular exports, but that’s just what it is.

Here, at Rebecca Ruth Candies, chocolate has ruled for 103 years. Glass cases are lined with horse heads fashioned of white and dark chocolate, raspberry jellies, nut lovers’ caramels, pecan blondies and some 125 other types of confectionery.

For Valentine’s, they kick it up a notch. You can select a heart-shaped box filled with assorted milk chocolates or their world-famous bourbon balls (made with 100 proof Evan Williams bourbon and aged just as bourbon is, and no, they won’t divulge their secret recipe, so don’t ask.) For younger lovers who haven’t yet acquired a taste for bourbon, they’ll offer a heart or rose-shaped sucker.

The holiday favorites, however, are their chocolate-covered strawberries. Early bird shoppers can go to their website at rebeccaruthretail.com and place an order for a pound box ($24.10) or a half-pound box ($16.80), and select the date and store for their pick-up.

After February 8th, prices go up and if you wait until the last minute, you’ll be stuck buying drug store candy again.

Hoggy’s Ice Cream: ‘Hogs and Kisses’ for Valentines Day

Ice cream lovers across the Bluegrass Region go hog wild over Hoggy’s Ice Cream Parlor. A scant three years after its opening, the line of people waiting for a cone or cup still winds halfway around the block during the sweltering summer months.

Inside the pink and blue storefront with the pink and blue hog hoisting a pink and blue cone, owner Chrissy Hogsten scoops up some 20 different flavors for her devoted clientele. Those flavors include coconut almond chip (an ice cream version of almond joy candy bar), Fudgy Cow (like Rocky Road without the nuts) and Boss Hogg (think Reese’s Pieces in a sundae).

But what really distinguishes Hoggy’s is that Hogsten believes they are the only place in Central Kentucky that serves Dole Whip, a mouth-watering dairy-free, fat-free and gluten-free soft serve originated by the Dole Pineapple Company and made famous at Disneyland in Anaheim, California.

You’ll have to wait awhile for your Dole Whip as Hoggy’s is currently closed until early March, but they will be open Valentine’s Weekend (Feb. 11, 12 and 13) for customers to enjoy their special “Hogs and Kisses” offering.

A scoop of strawberry-based ice cream, drizzled with hot fudge and topped with whipped cream and chocolate-covered strawberries will be served in a cup ($6.99), or for a dollar more, on a homemade waffle bowl.

B’s Bakery: ‘Serving the cutest food’ in the country

At B’s Bakery, pink flamingo donuts, mini cookies atop elaborately iced cupcakes and petit-fours sporting tiny gingerbread men are so impossibly cute that television’s The Food Network has dubbed the bakery “one of the 10 bakeries in the U.S. serving the cutest food.”

This Valentine’s Day, you may not find flamboyant flamingos or rakish gingerbread men on the menu, but you can find equally “cute” and delicious items.

Cakes, cookies and petit fours, appropriately decorated with hearts, roses and sprinkles, will fill the glass cases. Assorted breakfast items with seasonal touches will be available. Cream Horns, a B’s favorite, are back.

Beth Carter, who cooked for Taylor Swift and Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond before returning home and opening her bakery, loves coming up with specialty items for every holiday. That’s good news for customers who can pre-order a box of chocolate-covered strawberries or a charcuterie board composed of sweet treats rather than cheese and meats.

Poppy’s Bakery: Heart-shaped donuts, petit-fours, cake pops and more

Frankfort may be a small town, but its residents are second to none in their love of sweets. For that reason, a second bakery, Poppy’s Bakery, has its own followers who declare their donuts sacrosanct; the specialty cakes are chic in the extreme, and one fan even went so far as to describe the Long Johns as a “chocolate and cream oral ecstasy.”

For those who might not know what a Long John is, it’s an oblong, yeast-risen pastry coated with a glaze or iced like a cake.

This locally-owned bakery offers everything from muffins, cupcakes, cookies, pies, petit-fours, croissants and cheese Danish to baklava that would make a Greek lick his or her lips and a King Cake for those who just can’t make it to New Orleans in time for Mardi Gras (watch out for that plastic baby tucked somewhere in the middle.)

But on Valentine’s Day, they take sweetness to a new level. In addition to the chocolate covered strawberries which are a bakery favorite, they will have heart-shaped donuts with pink and red icing, decorated cupcakes and petit-fours, cake pops with heart-shaped sprinkles, heart-shaped cookies iced with roses and lips and a four-inch cake with chocolate covered strawberries on top.

Most of all, Poppy’s is a home-away-from-home for its devoted fans who come for the hand-crafted baked goods served with a side of love – and isn’t love what Valentine’s is all about?

Whether you’re a connoisseur of chocolate, an ice cream aficionado or a devotee of donuts, this Valentine’s Day you’ll find your sweet spot in Frankfort.

This story was originally published February 3, 2022 at 6:00 AM.