Sweet Salvation
Mail-order chocolates
for last-minute
holiday gifts
There are countless places to buy chocolates online, but if you eliminate the ones with shoddy ordering systems or extortionary shipping fees, you narrow the field considerably. The confections that made this list were three things: easy to order, pretty to look at, and delightful to eat.
1. Recchiuti Holiday Motif Box ($18). Eight pieces of the signature burnt-caramel ganache are dipped in bittersweet chocolate and decorated with mod snowflakes, trees, and snowmen.
2. CocoaBella Custom Box Builder ($40–$75). Handpicking a box of 20 or 40 chocolates will ensure that even the most selective giftee can’t complain—and no half-eaten chocolates will languish in the box, either.
3. Fran’s Gray & Smoked Salt Caramels ($22). An assortment of 15 caramels covered in milk and dark chocolate and topped with crunchy bits of gray and smoked salt.
4. MarieBelle Hot Chocolate Lunchbox ($25). Six single-serve envelopes of the famed single-origin hot chocolate arrive in a cute blue and gold metal lunchbox.
5. Monete di Fiori Coin Assortment ($20). The Washington chocolatier makes four types of chocolate (two milks, two darks), which are transformed into festive coins, elegantly wrapped in foil, and shipped to lucky recipients.
6. L.A. Burdick Holiday Penguin Box ($32). Nothing spreads holiday cheer like biting the head off adorable chocolate and lemon ganache birdies. Well, maybe biting off their little almond wings.
7. Kaka’wa Cocoa Beans ($28). The chocolatiest chocolate of them all—whole cocoa beans covered in white, dark, and milk chocolate.
8. Coco Délice Caramelized Chocolate Hazelnuts ($16.95). Coco Délice caramelizes whole hazelnuts and coats them in semisweet chocolate and cocoa powder to make these crunchy delicacies.
9. Bissinger’s Pumpkin Bark ($16.75). Don’t let the bright orange swirls put you off—this pumpkin and milk chocolate bark is actually very subtle in flavor.
10. Teuscher Champagne Truffles ($36). Champagne cream–filled truffles get a snowy coating of powdered sugar for a festive treat.
Roxanne Webber is an associate editor at CHOW.