Chocolate News & Notes: Holiday Chocolate Top 10 List
by Jennie B, Zingerman’s Chocolate Specialist
These holiday chocolate recommendations will help you find impressive presents, delightful stocking stuffers, or sweets to accompany your holiday meal. Visit our online store or stop in the Next Door Café to peruse our entire bounty of seasonal treasures.
1. Chocolate Gift Boxes
A variety of options for you to give the gift of chocolate this year! Choose from any of our pre-selected, ready to give holiday chocolate gift boxes or email me at [email protected] for suggestions and I will help you create your own custom box! Choose from a variety of milk chocolate, dark chocolate or inclusion bars from around the world!
Celebrate the tradition of Hanukkah gelt a bit more deliciously! Gold and silver dusted disks from Veruca Chocolates in Chicago, are formed to look like Judean coins circa 40 B.C.E. Available in two sophisticated flavors: dark chocolate with crunchy cocoa nibs and dark chocolate with crystals of sea salt. A great gift for any night of Hanukkah.
Our favorite artisanally-made “bean to bark” from Springfield, Missouri has returned to the Deli with much-anticipated delight. Layers of dark single-origin dark and white chocolates topped with all-natural crushed peppermint from Denver’s Hammond’s Candies. Made with complex 72% dark chocolate from Mababu,Tanzania and cocoa butter from the Philippines (which is pressed right in their shop!) Makes a cheerful gift or an indulgent confection to keep all for yourself.
Often incorporating original recipes dating back over 130 years, this innovative Italian chocolate shop has been producing handmade confections in small batches for over a century. Traditionally crafted, these bags are filled with an assortment of chocolates and are ready to gift.
Rich, crisp layers of delicious dark and creamy white chocolates, studded throughout and topped with crushed all-natural peppermint candy from Hammond’s Candies! Our friends at Zingerman’s Candy Manufactory tested nearly a dozen versions of peppermint bark before choosing this recipe.
Give the gift of this indulgent Michigan-made classic with simple ingredients (chocolate, pecans, butter and sugar!) mixed to create a sublime texture. With its addictive balance of salty and sweet, you might need another bag. Available in bags of milk or dark chocolate, tied with a festive bow.
Treat yourself or your sweetie to this blissful box of chocolates containing tender, luscious figs from Spain filled with soft chocolate truffle cream and a hint of brandy liqueur, dipped in dark chocolate. Their rich, full-bodied flavor pairs beautifully with a bold red wine.
Available on our Next Door Café menu and by the tin! Warm-up after a day of sledding and building snowmen with a frothy mug of our most popular hot cocoa for over 15 years. Add your favorite kind of milk to make this chocolatey classic at home. Sip while decking the halls or pair a tin with a package of Zingerman’s Marshmallows for a comforting and indulgent gift for the cocoa lover in your life.
There’s no mystery as to why the Original Zzang is our candy company’s most popular candy bar: it starts with honey nougat made with natural peanut butter rolled in silky muscovado brown sugar caramel, combined with big Virginia peanuts and finished with a dip into a rich bath of 64 percent dark Colombian chocolate. At nearly a half a pound this bar makes a great stocking stuffer or an addition to a gift basket! Available in its original wrapping, or with a festive Christmas or Hanukkah design!
This set of chocolates comes in two sizes and offers an around the world exotic, chocolate vacation for one or more people. Each bar is a consistent 75% cacao, illustrating how bean variety and origin, not just percentage, play a big role in developing flavor. Taste your way from toasty espresso Ecuador to red raspberry Madagascar.
1. Chocolate Gift Boxes
5. Zingerman’s Candy Manufactory Peppermint Bark
8. Zingerman’s Hot Cocoa Tin 
10. Francois Pralus, Dark Chocolate Pyramid
