Guest Author - Deborah Markus
Chocolate lovers are generally easy to please on gift-giving occasions. All they want is love and chocolate. Or chocolate to love. Heck, just give them some chocolate, and they'll take care of the love on their own.
But what if you're married to a chocophile, or have been best friends with one for the past twenty years, and want to give a chocolate gift that isn't just, as food writer Laurie Colwin phrased it, the same old thing?
There are some wonderful chocolates out there, and some unexpected sources for it.
Target, of all places, stocks a fabulous line of chocolate called Choxie. These festively-wrapped bars are available in flavors like (dark) Chocolate Candy Cane, (milk) Chocolate Gingerbread, and (deep dark) Espresso Truffle.
And they're not just novel flavors -- the chocolate is very good. There's something quite pleasing about having a chocolate bar for every mood.
Newtree chocolates take this concept a step further and declares what mood you'll be in after eating their smart, sophisticated little chocolates. These are perfect gifts because their matchbook-sized boxes are at once irresistible and portable. They're high quality Belgian chocolate. And each one claims to take you to a distinct emotional realm.
Their dark chocolate moods include "Vigor" (coffee-flavored), "Sexy" (ginger), "Forgiveness" (lemon -- seems like a sour fruit to represent a sweet willingness to let bygones be bygones), and "Pleasure" (just plain dark -- a not-so-subtle dark chocolate bias, there).
I don't know if I felt exactly renewed after finishing one of the slim, tiny "Renew" bars. I certainly felt awake. The heady scent of blackcurrant got my undivided attention even before I bit into the chocolate. This was some serious dark -- 73% cocoa content, and not a hint of roughness.
Someone gave me a bar of Bloomsberry & Co.'s Christmas Survival Chocolate. The packaging alone -- the mock-serious instructions to "administer in cases of severe festive fever," with cartoon illustrations resembling those stick figures on the doors of men's and women's restrooms -- would make them worthwhile, enjoyable gifts. But as it happens, the chocolate itself is very good.
There are several different varieties, all with wonderfully witty wrappers. Though the company is based in New Zealand, the chocolate is available in shops all over the world and on the Internet.
New Mexico also has some terrific and unusual chocolate to offer. You don't have to live in (or near) Santa Fe to get a taste of what The ChocolateSmith has to offer -- their Web site is eminently accessible.
And their wares are unlike anything you've ever tasted. I absolutely disgraced myself with their toffee almond bark. It's set in the smoothest dark chocolate, and the almonds are steeped in tamari (similar to soy sauce). The combination of sweet and savory is divine.
So is the raspberry pate, dipped in dark chocolate. I thought the name was odd until I tried it and realized there's really no other way to describe the texture. It manages to be at once delicate and rich.
This being New Mexico, there are spicy chocolates available as well. I have a very wimpy palate, spice-wise, so I checked these chocolates with my friends.
They all agreed that the red chili pistachio bark was a pleasantly spicy chocolate. The green chili pistachio was spicy even to my Thai-food loving buddies. And the green chili pistachio with cranberries had all of us screaming and staggering in search of ice, so save it for the daring chocolate-lover on your list.
And remember -- nothing says love like thoughtfully-selected chocolate.
