XOXO Chocolates

Is there anything we like more than receiving a box of chocolate products in the mail?



No. There is not.



XOXO Chocolates is a small, independent Las Vegas chocolatier and bakery. They make fudge and various types of bark and biscotti and brownies and just a whole host of delicious things. So we sampled some of them, as we are wont to do.



The white chocolate fudge (upper lefthand corner) was salty and sweet, with an excellent texture, the kind of soft that melts in your mouth.

The espresso fudge (upper righthand corner) was excellent if you're a coffee fan. It had a strong coffee flavor, and bits of coffee bean throughout it, to add texture.

The biscotti (lower righthand corner) was not very chocolatey-tasting. It was plain biscotti with raisins, so really the only chocolate came from the white and dark chocolate drizzled on top.

The bark (lower lefthand corner) was a little milky for my tastes, but the almonds added nice texture, and the white chocolate drizzled on top made it look pretty. I tried only this one kind of bark, but I can see on the website that they have peppermint bark (which is my favorite type) and sugar-free almond bark (which seems useful), so I think you just need to pick your flavor wisely.

The winner from my perspective was definitely the espresso brownie (in the center, with the bow). The brownie was straight-up delightful, and its frosting was what carried the coffee flavor, so you could easily scrape off some or all of it if you don't love coffee.

The prices are also reasonable. I think a package of XOXO Chocolates would make an excellent gift for someone--it certainly made an excellent gift for me!

BOTTOM LINE: An up-and-coming dessert company that clearly loves chocolate as much as we do

La Maison du Chocolat Valentine and Easter Collection

Sorry not to have updated regularly, but here is some good news: La Maison du Chocolat's Valentine's and Easter collections!

First of all, La Maison has 4 special bonbons for Valentine's 2015.  Apparently these are developed, like, a year in advance, and initially conceived about a year before that.  Each year has a theme, and this year's is caramel:

All four were good and interesting.  My favorite, unsurprisingly, was the plain dark chocolate bonbon, sourced from a plantation in Venezuela whose beans gave a strong caramel flavor note.  Apparently, many people did a double-take, thinking there was caramel in there.  I didn't, but I did love it.

My second favorite, surprisingly, was the milk chocolate.  It has some rooibos tea and some other good stuff.  An interesting taste that was still both chocolatey and playful.

I did not get to taste the Easter design, but wow:

Check out the detail on the "leather"!  This is all carved by hand!:

Not many of these are made, and each takes a full day, done in assembly line fashion.  It's delivered to the various shops in several pieces, and then "glued" together with ganache.

Bottom Line: La Maison du Chocolat is good enough to get us blogging again.

Baci Perugina Double Layer Candy Bar

You probably know Perugina from their famous Baci chocolate hazelnut-filled "kisses":


But they now have a NEW product, called a Baci double layer candy bar, and they sent us a few bars to try because they are awesome. So this package showed up in the mail:



What is inside the package? These things!



And what is inside that wrapping? This!



As you may have predicted from the name "double layer candy bar," these bars have, ahem, two layers. In the dark chocolate bars, one layer is dark chocolate, the other is hazelnut chocolate, and in the middle are actual hazelnuts. The milk chocolate bars are the same, only with a milk chocolate layer in place of the hazelnut layer.



The hazelnuts added a great textural element, making this extremely edible. I went through a bar much faster than I'd anticipated. It is very much for candy lovers: the chocolate is sweet and straightforward. Even the dark chocolate bars are only 51%, and they're counterbalanced by the gianduia layer, making this a bar that's much better for the milk chocolate fan than for someone looking for an intense dark chocolate flavor. I could see this going over big with the Toblerone crowd.

BOTTOM LINE: A classy candy bar perfect for fans of sweet chocolate, and of chocolate with pieces of hazelnut in it.

Chocolate NYC

If there is one thing we love here at Chocolate NYC, it's holidays. That's because everyone else thinks it's a great idea to eat, make, and give chocolate things on holidays. We happen to know that every day is a great day for chocolate, but some other people need a "special occasion," and that is A-OK by us.

The Christmas/Hanukkah season is perhaps the best time of year for the gift of chocolate, as Seattle Chocolates has figured out. This December they're running a campaign called #ChocolateGives: you purchase chocolates from them, or just post something using the hashtag, and they will donate food to someone in need through food pantries in Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, and New York. You get to be charitable and eat chocolate at the same time. It's a win-win situation.



So how is the chocolate, you want to know? I'll tell you: it is very good.



They offer a variety of bonbons, my favorite being the candy cane ones: you can't go wrong with dark chocolate with peppermint flecks. I would eat these every day. They have a bazillion other flavors of bonbon, if mint isn't your thing: sea salt and peanut butter and fruit fillings of all sorts, sone dark and some milk chocolate, so you can get whatever floats your personal boat.

They take a few risks with their "truffle bars," some of which pay off, and some of which do not. I was unimpressed by the Birthday Cake one--it had too many ingredients and tasted too sweet, though I am not the target audience for white chocolate under any circumstances. The dark bars, on the other hand, are lovely, and I'd definitely recommend them.

BOTTOM LINE: I would eat this chocolate even if doing so didn't contribute to charity. The fact that it does (or that it will through the end of the month, anyway) is just icing on the proverbial cake.

Blossom Chocolate Ganache with Chocolate "Ice Cream"

You can't see this, but it was pretty good:

We've discussed Blossom before.  This dessert was from the branch in Chelsea.  Of the three Blossom desserts now reviewed, this is probably the best.  Again, the cake isn't perfect, but the ganache is very nice.  The chocolate ice cream was a bit uninspired, and likely what went into the milkshake.

Bottom Line: A good effort, and definitely recommended after a meal, though not enough to draw you there on its own.