Let’s be honest, Valentine’s Day is not exactly a plan-ahead type of holiday

It’s not like it sneaks up on you, unlike Easter or Thanksgiving, where the date changes from year to year, Valentine’s Day is always on February 14th.  So why all the last minute fuss? 

I have my own theories, but I won’t go into them here.

I will say though that this year it pays to plan ahead because we’re offing $5 shipping!  Pay just $5 per address for standard shipping —no matter how large your order.

This means you can spring for one of our heart-shaped boxes or maybe our new Love is Sweet Basket (filled with such lusciousness as our Sea Salt Caramels and gourmet truffles) and only pay $5 to ship.  Order now, select your arrival date and you will be a hero!

In this case (as in almost all cases) it won’t pay to wait.  This offer is only available for a limited time!

(You can’t say we didn’t try to help.)

It’s time for another taste education workshop with our good friends at Slow Food Vermont.  This Saturday from 12pm-4pm at our Factory Store on Pine St, honey is the star.  We will have Bill Mares, beekeeper extraordinaire, in attendance to talk about how honey is collected, the variety and sources of honey including the special characteristics of Vermont honey and the Vermont Beekeepers Association’s work with over 1,200 local beekeepers to sustain Vermont’s honey industry.

Slow Food Vermont will offer a honey tasting that focuses on the “taste of place.” The tasting will inform participants how to taste and evaluate different varieties of honey and include a discussion about how the local landscape gives Vermont’s honey a complex and unique flavor.  Attendees will sample honey in its many forms including liquid, comb, creamed, and whipped, and a chance to sample pollen, another product of the hive.

You might wonder:  where is the chocolate?  Not to worry, we’ll be sampling chocolates and caramels made with Vermont honey, featuring a Dark Chocolate Honey Caramel, an Organic Honey Fig Truffle and the Five Star Caramel Bar. 

Stop by, we’d love to see you and share our passion for local ingredients, taste of place and amazing chocolate!  Saturday January 28th from 12-4pm at the LCC Factory Store, 750 Pine Street in Burlington.

Oh, we should also mention, all three LCC retail stores—750  Pine Street and 64 Church Street in Burlington and on Route 100 in Waterbury— will be offering sweet deals on chocolate until January 29th!

Hot chocolate seems like a pretty simple thing.  Add some milk, cocoa, maybe a marshmallow or two and you’re done, right?  Well, maybe not.
In fact, there are quite a few different ways people like their hot cocoa.

Snapshot of our cafe menu

Coffee and hot chocolate is a no-brainer.  We even have a Mocha Hot Chocolate in our line.  But some (like our wonderful retail staff) like to take it a step further.  Here are some of our most popular café concoctions made with our famous gourmet hot chocolate—

Mocha Old World:  Old World Drinking Chocolate with espresso.  This will rock your world.  Literally.

Angry Aztec: Like some spice with your drink?  Try our Aztec Hot Chocolate with espresso. 

DIY Aztec:  Old World Drinking Chocolate, adding your own cinnamon and cayenne.  Make it as spicy (or not) as you like!

Peppermint Mocha:  Mountain Mint with espresso.  A cool, caffeine-rich experience!

What about marshmallows?  Or whipped cream?

There are plenty of customers when asked which one they would like with their hot chocolate, they simply say “yes.”   And if you ask me, those are the smart ones.  Homemade whipped cream or homemade marshmallows?  How can people be expected to choose?!

Oh, and while we’re talking about cool and crazy hot chocolate drinks, we don’t want to forget to mention our new Chai & Mighty Hot Chocolate.  Trust us when we say that cocoa & spice means everything nice.

Of course there are those who love the traditional cup of hot chocolate.  And I must admit, most of the time I’m in that camp.  Maybe with a marshmallow if I’m feeling kind of crazy.  :)

And did I mention we’re having a hot chocolate sale?  (just a friendly reminder.)

(This could be yours!)

There is another way to shop for your favorite gourmet chocolates now. 

A lot of people know us because they visited one of our three company stores in Vermont.  Perhaps they received a gift and now shop online or they discovered us at their local specialty food store or at the cash register in Whole Foods.  Maybe you look forward to receiving our catalogs each season. Well, now you can discover and purchase our chocolate one more way- through Catalog Spree.  It’s the same beautiful catalog you receive in the mail—but online!  I know what you’re thinking, that’s called a website. Read on, it’s not a website.

In the words of our friends at Catalog Spree:  “It's your mobile catalog shopping app – browse, shop, subscribe and share all your favorite brands... and discover new ones right on your iPad. And give your mailbox a break!”

You flip pages like you would an actual catalog and it’s a very pleasant shopping experience.  I can’t explain why, but it just is. And instead of loading up your recycling bin with catalog after catalog, just browse to your heart’s content on Catalog Spree with nothing cluttering up your kitchen counter.  See something you want to buy?  Just click and it will bring you right to the website page where you can purchase the item!  It’s pretty slick.  So slick, Ellen DeGeneres mentioned it on her show last month. 

Need some more coaxing?  We’re in great company, with over 100 catalogs including Nordstrom, Sundance and Omaha Steaks.  Plus you can enter all sorts of sweepstakes - including chocolate delivered to your door every month for 9 months!  Don’t have an Ipad?  You can still enter all of the amazing sweepstakes, just click here.  Give it a try- this is one app that you will actually use!

As a chocolate company, we’re in the food business.  And so we are always keeping an eye on current flavor trends.   Sometimes we jump on board, sometimes we don’t.   In general, Lake Champlain Chocolates is more about balanced flavor combinations rather than crazy flavor combinations (think mushrooms and chocolate). 

Sometimes it seems like there is a race to see who can come up with the craziest chocolate combinations out there—but is that what people really want?  Perhaps once…but in the end, I bet most of you will go back to your favorite milk caramel bar or dark chocolate almond bar.

We try to strike a balance (there’s that word again) between offering classic confections like our Almond Butter Crunch, Dark Raspberry Truffles and Peanut Butter Chocolates that our customers buy again and again, with some new and interesting flavors like the Grace Under Fire Bar, Organic Honey Fig and Mango Truffles and our Sea Salt Caramels- which I would argue is fast becoming an entry in the classic category.

What classics do you love?  And what interesting flavor combinations have you tried?  Or would like to see us try?  Let us know!

We can’t stop talking about marshmallows around here.  Yes, we are a chocolate company but these marshmallows we make are worth talking about – again.

There are some obvious reasons why people buy marshmallows- to plop in a cup of hot chocolate, make rice crispy treats and to make s’mores.   You may not think of winter as s’more season (you may not think of s’mores having a season at all) but s’mores are not just for outside around the campfire.  How about over the fireplace after dinner?  It’s much more civilized- no mosquitoes, no sitting on the ground or a dirty log, no smoke in your eyes.  Sounds quite nice, doesn’t it?

Well, here is another civilized idea- maybe even a good one for a New Year’s celebration:  our fresh marshmallows dipped in chocolate fondue!   We have a super simple, delectable fondue recipe and if you’re feeling especially motivated, you can even make a version of our marshmallows.  Or, if you’re tired of baking and cooking, just order the marshmallows online.  They are made super fresh, in really small batches so it is almost like they were made right in your kitchen.

We’d love to hear what clever and delicious ways you enjoy marshmallows!

Did you hear?  We have marshmallows!  And not just any marshmallow— these are giant, pillowy, melt-in-your mouth cubes that are made fresh and can be shipped direct to your waiting mug of hot chocolate.  Finally we have gourmet marshmallows that live up to our gourmet hot chocolate!
A cup of hot chocolate just isn’t complete without one or two marshmallows floating on top.  And these are distinctly different than anything you’d find in a grocery store.   Tediously hand cut, these marshmallows embody the old tradition of creating marshmallows with the sap of the marsh mallow plant, egg whites and sugar (even though we don’t quite make them like that today).  The texture itself will blow you away—it’s the perfect balance of chewy and soft.  And slightly melted in a cup of cocoa?  It’s beyond words. You’ll just have to try it for yourself.

When Burlington Parks & Recreation asked us if we’d like to put our gourmet chocolates in their Quad Time Capsule, we were both excited and concerned. Sure, we would love to have people in 2106 learn about what our chocolates were like in 2011, but we certainly wouldn’t want to eat 100 year-old chocolates! We were assured that all food items are preserved in glass containers inside the time capsule, so we said yes.
To go with the chocolates, we thought it would be fun to think about what chocolate might be like in 100 years. Keep reading to get a head start on the time capsule and learn a little about our Chocolates of Vermont and what we hope they’ll be like in 2106!


In 2011, we have already been crafting our signature Chocolates of Vermont for 28 years. Today they’re still made from the original recipes, blending our award-winning dark chocolate with all-natural Vermont ingredients – sweet butter, pure maple syrup, fresh cream, and honey from the hive. When you eat these chocolates, you taste the simple, pure flavors of Vermont that first inspired us to create them.

The idea of eating food that is locally produced is a very popular one in 2011. Consumers can go to Farmers’ Markets and talk to the people who raised the bees that produced their honey, or go to the grocery store and buy milk that comes from their neighbor’s cows. However, right now it is almost impossible to grow the cacao tree (that chocolate comes from) in Vermont. This tree requires a tropical, hot, humid environment and will only grow right around the Earth’s equator. That area of the world is known as the Cocoa belt, and most of the world’s cocoa beans come from places in Africa, Central and South America, and Southeast Asia. In 2011, it would be very difficult to grow cacao trees and produce cocoa beans in Vermont. It is far too cold and snowy for most of the year to make the cacao tree happy!

In 2106, it is our hope that even cacao trees can be grown locally. Whether Vermont is much warmer and less snowy, or special greenhouse technology has been developed – we hope that there is a way to make all of the ingredients in our Chocolates of Vermont completely local. Not only will they really be chocolates of Vermont, they might taste even more delicious and remind us of our wonderful Vermont farmers with every bite. We also hope that, in 2106, our Chocolates of Vermont are still made with the same recipe, just like they were in 2011 and 26 years before that!

Most of all, we hope that you enjoy them – and that everyone still loves chocolate in 2106 as much as we do in 2011!

Winter has arrived in Vermont, so come warm up with some free gourmet hot chocolate!  This Saturday we will feature a free hot chocolate tasting, complete with our amazing house-made marshmallows, from 12:00 pm until 4:00 pm at our 750 Pine Street Factory Store & Cafe on Saturday, November 26th, 2011.  Attendees will sample a flight of four all-natural drinking chocolates from around the world:

Organic Fair Trade Hot Chocolate - a classic chocolate flavor
Mountain Mint- perfect balance of cool peppermint and rich chocolate
Aztec –classic combination of cocoa and cinnamon
Old World - made with pure chocolate shavings (54% cocoa) for intense chocolate flavor

Visiting LCC’s factory store is also the perfect way to celebrate Small Business Saturday.  Small Business Saturday is a day dedicated to small businesses that “create jobs, boost the economy and preserve neighborhoods around the country.”  We are proud to participate in Small Business Saturday by encouraging people to shop at their local businesses and offering special promotions and events throughout the day.

Hope to see you there!

Having one of your holiday chocolates picked by Martha Stewart is a bit like winning an Oscar — if it’s good enough for Martha, you know it’s good enough for just about everyone else. So when Martha Stewart Living called and requested a sample of our Winter Chocolate Coins, I was cautiously excited. When they called a few weeks later saying they’d feature the product in their Holiday Gift Guide, I was ecstatic!  All the same, from experience I know never to count my chickens — or chocolate coins — until they show up in print . .

Lo and behold, this past weekend when I flipped to page 62, there it was: a Martha Stewart stocking stuffer “Fab Find”!  How gratifying to read that our chocolate coin gift bag “turns a taste-challenged classic into a delicious find.” And we’re in good company with the rest of Martha’s stocking stuffer picks, including a Bobbi Brown make-up case, a classic box of Crayola crayons, and a nifty antique bottle key for opening party drinks! I think I might like all those things in my stocking this year . . . and I hope Santa’s listening!

So what makes our chocolate coins better than all the rest? We make them with the finest Belgian dark chocolate and peppermint crunch, wrap them in silver and gold holiday foils, and package them in a gift bag that’s hand-tied with a festive blue ribbon. They’re also versatile — so whether you’re in the market for Christmas chocolates or Hanukkah gelt, you can tuck a bag of these in every stocking, hand them out as holiday chocolate treats, or just fill up a candy dish and watch them disappear . . .