Hello sweets!

Let’s talk about sweets. ’Tis the season. 

When I first started making chocolates I was 100% against all these holidays. I was an angsty little kid, basically. Over the years I’ve softened—and not (just) because let’s be honest, holidays are a chocolatier’s bread & (vegan) butter. I’ve sort of come to love the rituals we engage in as a culture, as tacky as that sounds. All these holidays mean different things to all of us, and I enjoy working with my fellow LL chocolatiers to come up with unique treats that might become a regular part of someone’s celebrations. I love hearing about how a customer orders a Winter Wonderland Box for her solstice party every December (pretty accurate description of the typical LL customer, right there), or how two sweethearts buy our treats for themselves every Valentine’s, and try not to order the same ones (it’s happened that we’ve noticed identical orders going to the same address addressed to opposite names—awkward! Or is it?). I like being a part of your life! How nosy. 

So let’s talk about all this stuff, this stuff we're making for you. 

1) My Heart is a Blood Orange and it Belongs to You: I had all these fancy ideas about making a different big heart thingie, but then everyone convinced me that the Blood Orange Heart was so special that we should bring it back. So we did. (Next year maybe we’ll have two flavors of big heart thingies.) 

This heart is big enough and crazy-rich enough for two people to feel slightly drunk after sharing it, or three people to make an abundant dessert of it, or however many loved ones you want to share it with to feel sated with sweetness and citrus-happiness. 

The first layer is a blood orange caramel made with fresh blood orange juice and tangy bits of preserved blood orange from last year’s citrus bounty. It’s layered with a smooth, endlessly creamy white chocolate ganache spiked with blood orange zest, then enrobed in dark chocolate and topped with a slice of carefully candied blood oranges. 

2) Anatomical Hearts: A solid chocolate made with 66% dark chocolate, packed with lightly crushed cacao nibs, locally roasted coffee beans, black salt enriched with volcanic minerals, and crunchy bits of bright dried cherries.

3) Valentine's Bark: A big slab of chocolate enriched with candied citrus, candied roses and hibiscus, white chocolate hearts, and freeze dried raspberries. 

4) Heart Box! 

• Four chocolate caramels with chocolate sea salt garnish, enrobed in semisweet chocolate. 

• Five White Wine and Pear White Chocolate Cream Hearts: Local bosc pears and locally-made Whitecliff Vineyards white wine infuse a white chocolate cream filling, encased in a thin bittersweet chocolate shell.
• Four violet caramels with candied violet garnish
, a surprisingly addictive caramel, never overpowering, just mysteriously alluring, with a nice crunchy candied violet on top.
• Five Rosewater Cashew Cream Hearts: Our signature Valentine's bonbon, we've been making this gentle sweetheart for seven years. Organic cashews are ground until perfectly smooth, then combined with fragrant rosewater for a delicate, old-fashioned Valentine's cream. 

• Four Cinnamon Caramels: Lightly spicy cinnamon caramels made with ceylon and cassia cinnamons for a nice deep flavor, plus a little bit of mildly spicy ancho chilies. 

5) Valentine's Collection (pictured at top): All the love you can pack into an 8 x 5 x 4 box! One Box of Hearts, one Harlot Box of truffles, one Caramel Assortment Box, one Intense Anatomical Heart box *or* Furious Vulva box ooh la la. Gift wrapped (recyclable!), ribbon-tied (compostable!), delivered to your door. 

And finally.

If you’re really looking to get in good with your loved ones, may I suggest the most expensive thing on our website? The Caramel Collection is a huge assortment of all things caramel, put together expressly for long-time vegans who miss Snickers bars, dairy-allergic people who are angry they can never find good toffee, and/or anyone with taste buds who likes tasty things.