Are you ready for some football?
Super Bowl Sunday is right around the corner. Whether you watch it because you’re a true hardcore fan, enjoy the laughs from the commercials, or love grazing on the nachos and salsa, there seems to be some part of it that we all can appreciate. For the Super Bowl snackers out there, we’ve got a recipe for chocolate covered caramelized peanuts that could throw your Super Bowl party over the top.

Think salty, sweet, crunchy little snacks you can pop all afternoon if you want. The best part is they’re so simple, and you don’t even have to coat them in chocolate if you want, although trust me, you’ll want to.

Peanuts & chocolate, it doesn't get much better.

Chocolate Covered Caramelized Peanuts
¾ Cup Sugar
3 tbsp Water
3 ¼ Cup Peanuts – Raw (they’ll roast as you cook them)
½ tbsp Butter
½ tsp. Kosher Salt
11.5 oz. wt. Lake Champlain Chocolates 54% Dark chocolate (optional)
¼ Cup Lake Champlain Chocolates Organic Unsweetened Cocoa (optional)

1.    Combine the water and sugar in a wide saucepan. Cook without stirring to 230F.
2.    Remove from the heat and add the peanuts. Stir the mixture off the heat until the sugar fully crystallizes and the peanuts separate from themselves.
3.    Turn the heat to moderate and return pan to it. Continue cooking the peanut/sugar mixture until the sugar caramelizes (you’ll see it turns a lighter brown color).
4.    Once you’ve reached a caramel state, add the butter and salt. Stir to incorporate.
5.    Immediately pour out the peanuts onto the back of a sheet pan coated with oil. Let cool slightly. Then, separate the peanuts piece by piece. (Don’t wait too long. They might set up in clumps on you.) Then, allow the nuts to fully cool.

(Optional Addition of Chocolate)
6.    Melt the chocolate over a double boiler until all solid chunks are melted.
7.    When the nuts are fully cooled, put in the refrigerator for 5 minutes.
8.    Pull nuts out of the refrigerator and pour a third of the chocolate over them. Stir until coated. Pour out and separate into individual pieces when chocolate sets.
9.    Repeat the process two more times to fully coat the nuts.
10.  After the last addition of chocolate, sift cocoa powder over the nuts. Stir to evenly coat each nut. Dust off any excess.

Or, if you're feeling lazy, you can pick up some of these.

Pre-order sweet, delicious, hand-dipped chocolate strawberries today! 
Nothing says romance better than this Valentine’s Day classic.

All you have to do is call one of our three retail stores to place your order:
Pine Street Factory Store– 864-1807
Church Street Store – 862-5185
Waterbury Store – 241-4150

Dipped strawberries are $32.00 per pound (plus tax),  with 12-15 strawberries per pound. Just let us know how many you would like—we would love to pack them into a beautiful box and tie it with a bold red bow.  All you have to do is pick them up!

Pick up is available from Friday Feb 10-Tuesday Feb 14.

Strawberries are only available through our three retail stores. Unfortunately, due to their short shelf life and delicate beauty, they are not available online and cannot be shipped.

PS- They will sell out, so don’t miss your chance to give your Valentine a sweet, luxurious treat!

Last Saturday, the LCC Pine Street Factory Store partnered with the Vermont Beekeepers’ Association and Slow Food Vermont to celebrate and educate – all about honey!

While most of us eat honey regularly (in our breakfast, tea, and even chocolate), very few people really know what it takes to bring it from the bees to the bear-shaped containers we buy it in. On Saturday, we set out to change that.

The store was buzzing from noon until 4 pm with people eager to learn – and taste – the whole process. The event was set up as a series of tasting tables, starting with the always-popular “Learn to Taste” table, run by Pam Chomsky-Higgings from Slow Food Vermont. A mysterious series of clear liquid solutions let everyone taste the differences in the five main tastes, and helped “train the palate” before moving on to the many forms and varieties of honey.

Next, attendees had the opportunity to pick the brains of two very experienced local beekeepers – Bill Mares and Scott Wilson. They answered a wide variety of questions about their work in honey making, and also provided equipment to look at and different forms of honey for tasting. Unfamiliar forms like honey straight from the comb, creamed honey, and even whipped honey were the most popular!

Mara Welton from Slow Food Vermont led the third station – a flight of honeys. Groups started by tasting bee pollen, which is the starting point for any honey production. Mara encouraged eating just one pellet at a time, because each piece of pollen originated on a different flower and would have a unique flavor and sweetness. After tasting the pollen, the tasting groups sampled four different honeys. Each was unidentified, and Mara asked participants to describe the flavors and sensations they noticed from each honey. Responses varied from “floral” and “delicate” to “dark and complex, like molasses.” Three of the honeys were local varieties and one was a commercial blend. Part of the tasting was trying to guess which was the commercial honey, and it wasn’t as easy as it seemed!

As with any event hosted at LCC, we didn’t want anyone leaving without trying lots of chocolate. Tying together the celebration of honey and the taste education, we provided a station for attendees to taste the gourmet chocolates we make every day that feature the unique sweetness of honey, and we encouraged everyone to slow down and really taste what a wonderful combination chocolate and honey can be. Honey Caramel Chocolates of Vermont, Organic Honey Fig truffles, and our best-selling Caramel Five Star Bar were all on offer, and all very much enjoyed.

To top off the event, we were featuring a brand-new drink in our café – a honey latte made with local wildflower honey from Waterbury. It received a warm, sweet welcome, and will be sticking around for a while!

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.