Chocolate To The Party: Valentine's Day Chocolates
What is it about chocolate? Whether you prefer your chocolate single-origin and pure, or full of all kinds of inventive flavors and ingredients, there’s a perfect chocolate bite for everyone. Chocolate can be dark and floral, with just the right amount of bitterness balancing against the natural berry flavors of the cacao plant, or light and sweet with toffee and caramel notes.
Oh, right—Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day isn’t always everyone’s favorite holiday, but to that we say: Who says giving the gift of fine chocolate has to be a romantic gesture? With everything that’s happened, is happening, and will continue to happen for some time yet, Valentine's Day gifts can be for anyone you care for, and that includes yourself. Whether it’s simple heart-shaped gummies, a box of hand-painted passion fruit caramels, or full-blown curated gift baskets, these are gifts worth giving and getting. And while we have quite the selection this year, we thought it was worth shouting out some newcomers and favorites!
Ritual Chocolate
When it comes to a classic Valentine’s Day spread, you might think of dark chocolate, Champagne, and red berries. Ritual Chocolate wraps all that up into one beautiful package, with their Aprés Chocolate Bar! Organic cacao from the Sambirano Valley in Madagascar is soaked in sparkling white wine, infusing the cacao for days before being ground into chocolate. Dried raspberries are sprinkled liberally on the bar for the perfect tart finish to a decadent chocolate experience.
Goodio Chocolate
Goodio’s stance on chocolate is that if cacao is a nutrient-dense superfood, so too should be the products made from it. That’s why Goodio chooses to use only raw cacao from organic, non-GMO farms, slowly stone-ground for three days to keep compound-changing, nutrient-killing heat out of the equation. The bars are even sweetened with coconut palm sugar, which has a low Glycemic index. Of course, nutrition and health isn’t Goodio’s only focus, because what good is a healthy treat if it’s not tasty? Dried raspberries and strawberries are blended into their dark milk 49% bars, and we have to say, these are the smoothest, silkiest stone-ground chocolate bars we’ve ever tasted.
Fruition
This Catskills chocolatier is one of our enduring favorites, and with good reason. While we carry their Brown Butter Bourbon Caramels year round, these Passion Fruit Caramels are a Valentine’s Day special. Rich butter caramel is cooked with passion fruit, coated with Fruition's 68% Hispaniola dark chocolate, then hand-painted a striking hot pink for the perfect Valentine’s Day gift.
