9 Decadent Ways to Get Your Valentine’s Day Chocolate Fix
There are so many ways to say “I love you,” but we’ve found the best way to be chocolate. And not just limited to chocolate truffles—we’re open to bars and cookies and more. We’ve gathered some of our favorite purveyors of chocolate confections—from an Ecuadorian company making high-end bars you savor like a glass of scotch to a whimsical bakery reimagining chocolate frosting—to create this list of outstanding places from which to buy your Valentine’s Day treats.
Oodaalolly x Kasama
San Francisco chocolate company Oodaalolly has partnered with Kasama, a small batch rum made in the Philippines, to create a trio of spirit-infused bars. The result is a collection of creamy and tropical chocolates: 70 Kasama Cacao, White Chocolate with Pineapple Chunks and Coconut Milk Chocolate. There’s more than just that special edition, though. Oodaalolly, founded by Hernan Lauber, combines Filipino cacao with Swiss chocolate-making techniques to create flavors like dark chocolate with calamansi, almond and sea salt, and milk chocolate with coffee.
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Posh Pretzels
Fans of sweet-and-salty or chewy-and-crunchy combos need look no further than these decadent, eye-catching and highly addictive treats handmade by AnnMarie D’Erasmo and her team in Tarrytown, New York. Each of the more than 30 available flavors starts with a base of high-quality pretzels and Belgian chocolate, but then takes things to new heights; choose from dipped and drizzled options like Dark Caramel Toasted Coconut, Milk Toffee Crunch, Red Velvet or White Peppermint, or go for ones stuffed with peanut butter and jelly, Nutella or Oreos. The Sprinkled in Gold Collection Box ($40)—16 pieces of dark- and white chocolate-topped pretzels sprinkled with edible gold crystals—should pair particularly well with a glass of V-Day bubbly. Pretzels are available individually, in gift boxes and in larger platters.
zChocolat Passionate Ambrosia
Handcrafted by French chocolatier Pascal Caffet with the finest butter and cream from Normandy, zChocolat makes pralines and truffles of exceptional quality. Its most over-the-top offering features all 26 different varieties from its Number Collection—the company’s chocolates that each feature their own distinct filling, from subtle Iranian pistachio to silky white ganache covered in dark chocolate. There’s a mix of dark, milk and white chocolates from their signature collection as well as heart-shaped sweets filled with the likes of bourbon-vanilla caramel, hazelnut praline and more. The 168 sweets are placed inside a handmade mahogany chest for a most dramatic of presentations.
To’ak Cask Aged Chocolate Tasting Experience
Robb Report and To’ak have produced a tasting kit of an exclusive selection of single-origin Ecuadorian dark chocolate, crafted from the rarest and most prized cacao on Earth. Inside you’ll find 18 mini bars sourced from three different harvest years and aged in three special casks, plus all the tools and guidance you’ll need to conduct your own tasting experience. Consider this your ticket to a unique and addictive culinary adventure. Limited to 500 kits.
Blondery Blondies
Auzerais Bellamy has packed a lot of flavor in her decadent little boxes of blondies. The former executive pastry chef at Brooklyn’s Beloved Pies ‘n’ Thighs had been working on the recipe for years. After years of working in some of New York City’s best kitchens, she struck out on her own to found an online business selling her pecan and salted caramel, Brooklyn blackout, cinnamon sugar and birthday cake blondies directly to customers. But for the Blondery, timing is everything as it restocks the site each Sunday—and then sells out quick.
Milk Bar Fudgy Frosting Squares
Christina Tosi’s Milk Bar always has a knack for pinpointing those little details about food we’ll crave. For the whimsical bakery’s version of a box of chocolates, it takes cake frosting and swirls it into fudgy chocolate squares. The team has created three flavors: Birthday, which takes the bakery’s famous cake frosting and combines with crumbs and rainbow sprinkles; Double Dark Chocolate; and Milk Chocolate Cereal Milk, which mixes white and dark chocolate and cornflake crunch.
Kokak Harana Serenade Collection
Chocolatier Carol Gancia tapped into her Asian heritage when she launched Kokak Chocolates in 2020. Raised in the Philippines, Gancia moved to the States in 2004 to work in television production. Eventually she found her way to making chocolate with a delightful assortment of beautifully decorated truffles. This Valentine’s Day, she’s offering the Serenade collection, featuring mango passion fruit, café bombon and vanilla bean sea salt caramel.
Sweet Mae’s Stuffed Cookies
Apparently, you can improve upon perfection. Sweet Mae Cookie’s Co.’s founder Tiffany Biddle takes cookies and, inspired by generations of Southern baking in her family, stuffs them to create thick rounds of goodness. For instance, her sea salt chocolate chunk is stuffed with Nutella, while her brown butter lemon dough with white chocolate chips is stuffed with cookie butter and topped with a Biscoff.
Fran’s Truffle & Caramel Valentine’s Heart Box
Salted caramel is so ubiquitous now you could grab a jar of it made by Smuckers while walking down an aisle in Walmart. But two decades ago, when that wasn’t the case, chocolatier Fran Bigelow introduced her sea salt caramel chocolates at her eponymous shop in Seattle. Inspired by the France’s salted caramels, she combined that with her fine chocolate to create a sensation. This heart-shaped box is filled with her signature gray salt and smoked-salt caramels, along with other sweets like bittersweet chocolate covered in ganache, a selection of milk chocolate treats and truffles infused with raspberry or oolong tea.
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