Unusual Valentine's Day Chocolate Gifts
A gift of chocolates is a traditional way of expressing love on Valentine’s Day. But if you aren’t satisfied with the familiar heart-shaped box of candy, there are many other creative alternatives available. There are unusual chocolate gifts of all prices and types, and experiences focused on chocolate that can make Valentine’s Day more romantic.
Chocolate Walking Tours
If you’re looking for an experience rather than just giving your lover a box of chocolates, Taste of Chocolate offers chocolate-focused walking tours in Washington, D.C., Boston, and Seattle. There are a variety of tours available in each city, and the locales range from the familiar (Godiva, on the Dupont Circle tour in D.C.) to small local chocolatiers.
Since these tours take place on regularly scheduled days, none are specifically geared towards Valentine’s Day, but the Georgetown tour is the day before and includes one of the most unusual chocolates imaginable- chocolate-dipped bacon lollipops, at the Farmers and Fishers restaurant on the Georgetown waterfront.
If you’re in Boston, there’s an Evening of Chocolate & Wine on the 14th. The company also offers a variety of by-reservation private events, including chocolate making workshops and chocolate scavenger hunts. Pricing and reservation information can be found on Taste of Chocolate’s web site.
Spicy Chocolates
If your Valentine prefers something a bit hotter than the standard truffles and crèmes, Harry & David offers the Classic Valentine Rose Bouquet with Moonstruck Chocolates. The bouquet may be traditional, but the chocolate flavors are not: they include Three Spice Caramel, made with jalapeño, chipotle, and cayenne peppers; Spicy Sriracha Truffle, combining chile and ginger with dark chocolate ganache; and Szechuan Truffle, which blends pepper with roasted sesame ganache.
If you’d rather not go the store-bought route, there are numerous recipes for spicy chocolates available online. For example, a post on the Gypsy Chef blog from Feb. 14, 2010 gives suggestions for making spicy chocolate truffles using Lindt chili dark chocolate bars and red peppercorns, and Elizabeth Bau on About.com provides a recipe for “Aztec truffles”, using cayenne pepper along with orange and cinnamon.
Humorous and Cute Chocolates
For the Valentine with a sense of humor, the satirical newspaper The Onion offers its own variation on the heart-shaped tin at its online store. The candy in the box is nothing but ordinary Tootsie Rolls, but the box itself is the attraction rather than the chocolates. The inscription reads, “Please don’t use this holiday to reflect on our relationship and realize you’re better off without me.” (The Onion also offers a flask bearing the words, “I’m like a chocoholic, but for booze.”)
On a slightly less satirical note, the online store My-Funny-Valentine offers a variety of chocolate gift baskets both serious and amusing. So if your Valentine has a weakness for cute stuffed animals, you might want to check out the “Love Doctor” basket, which includes a 16-inch plush dog dressed in a doctor’s uniform along with a wide variety of chocolates. There’s also a gift box with a Valentine’s teddy bear whose feet are embroidered with the words “Kiss me”.
Vegan Chocolates
Finally, if your sweetheart refuses to eat food that contains animal products, Rose City Chocolates offers a variety of vegan chocolate boxes. The company states that not only does has the chocolate been made without any use of animal products, but that “all of the sugar used in making these chocolates is processed from the sugar beet- there are no animal products used in processing or filtering the sugar”.
Rose City has several different packages for these chocolates, including the traditional red heart and a tuxedo velvet heart, along with combinations of boxes and hearts. They also have Valentine’s Day towers along the lines of the ones sold by Harry & David, with stacked boxes of chocolates surrounded by roses.
So if you want to forego the familiar and give your Valentine a less conventional chocolate gift, there are plenty of options for every taste, and opportunities to make the occasion more romantic with the choice of a gift that's individual and unique
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