OCHO Organic Candy Bars
Step aside Mounds, Reese’s, Snickers, Milky Way and Three Musketeers..there’s a new bar in town.
Most candy bars fall into two categories: inexpensive chocolate bars made with all sorts of undesirable additives or expensive gourmet bars made with fresh high quality ingredients. With both ends of the chocolate bar market well covered, Oakland, California-based OCHO Candy realized there was an opportunity to provide consumers with a delicious, organic alternative to the traditional candy bars made with preservatives, additives, and artificial flavoring, and the pricy specialty bar. Read more 
Chocolate Gifts
All you need is love. But, a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt. -Charles M. Schulz
Finding the perfect chocolate gift for that special someone can be daunting with all the choices – dark, milk, or white, truffles, ganache, nuts, caramels, assortments – but zeroing in on the recipient can make the decision easier. Is the token of your affection an athlete, a baker, a Francophile, a chocolate connoisseur, a vegan, or a cookie lover? If so, consider the following possibilities: Read more
Christopher Elbow Chocolate Turtles
There is a running debate in our home over which Christopher Elbow Chocolate Turtles are better – the dark chocolate or the milk chocolate. With my preference for the dark chocolate and my husband preferring the milk chocolate turtle, there is no hope for a compromise although I keep telling him that if he eats dark chocolate, he will acquire a taste for the richness, subtle differences, and the bold flavor that dark chocolate offers.He then goes into some tirade about how women always want to change men and I realize there is an upside to him not enjoying dark chocolate turtles: I don’t have to share. Read more
Bell Stone Toffee
Novi, Michigan is the home of Bell Stone Toffee, a company dedicated to making scrumptious pecan toffee from a recipe that has been handed down from generation to generation since the 1880’s. Made of four ingredients – butter, sugar, chocolate, and pecans, Bell Stone Toffee is made fresh and shipped within days to ensure toffee lovers enjoy this treat at its freshest. With no preservatives, artificial colors, or flavorings, Bell Stone Toffee is everything toffee should be: buttery, crunchy, sweet, and slightly salty – with the top covered in milk, dark, or white chocolate (your choice) and covered in chopped pecans. Read more
Askinosie Peppermint Bark
Springfield, Missouri may be the birthplace of Route 66, but the town is also the home of Askinosie Chocolate, a small batch, bean to bar chocolate manufacturer who sources 100% of their cocoa beans directly from farmers throughout the world. Although the company specializes in single origin chocolate bars (whose beans can be traced to the source), Askinosie also makes a truly scrumptious peppermint bark of single origin dark chocolate, buttery white chocolate, and all natural crushed peppermint candy. Read more
Theo Salted Almond 70% Chocolate Bar
Seattle-based Theo Chocolate makes one of the best tasting dark chocolate bars on the market: the Salted Almond 70% Chocolate Bar. The company starts with the finest 70% dark chocolate made from organic, fair trade and non-GMO certified cocoa beans (that come primarily from the Congo, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and Peru) and adds organic almonds and a touch of Fleur de Sel to produce the ultimate sweet and slightly salty chocolate bar that has a crunch in every bite. Read more
Peppermint Peppies
Last summer, while attending the Fancy Food Show in New York City, I reluctantly tasted a sample of peppermint bark (after all, it was June) that made me stop, pause and reconsider my aversion to eating “holiday” candy in the summertime (it was dumb logic, anyway). The delicious treat was called a Peppermint Peppie: creamy white chocolate blended with peppermint oil, cloaked in rich, dark chocolate and then sprinkled with red and white peppermint crunchies. Rich and decadent, Peppermint Peppies give a new modern meaning to peppermint bark. Read more
Charles Chocolates Bars
Charles Siegel is the creative genius behind San Francisco based Charles Chocolates, a company with a total passion for producing the finest confections. Established in 2004, Charles Chocolates makes a variety of sweets: truffles, cremes, nuts, pralines, caramels, orange twigs, gourmet S’mores, chocolate covered nuts, edible chocolate boxes (really!), and my favorite: the Charles Chocolate Bars. Made by hand in small batches using the finest ingredients – chocolate, organic herbs, fruits, organic cream and butter, and nuts – and traditional artisanal techniques, Charles Chocolate Bars are decadent, rich, and deeply satisfying. Read more
Quin Candy
Located in downtown Portland is Quin – a candy shoppe featuring handmade gumdrops, lollipops, caramels, sours, and marshmallows by the foot. Owner and chief candy maker, Jami Curl never outgrew her passion for sweets which drove her to use high quality locally sourced ingredients to create traditional types of candy without artificial flavors, colors, or preservatives. Made in small batches by hand, Quin relies on sugar, fruit purée, gelatin, butter, heavy cream, vanilla beans, natural flavors and extracts, lemon zest, and more to make a delicious modern interpretation of old world favorites:
Healthier Halloween Options
For Halloween, it’s all about the candy and that means Trick or Treaters will have bags of sweets that will haunt every parent for about a month. Most candy has sugar or high fructose corn syrup and often artificial colors, flavors sweeteners, and preservatives. Although sugar is hard to avoid, there are alternative candy choices that are certified organic and flavored with 100% natural flavorings from fruits, vegetables and roots. Sound to good to be true? It’s not. YumEarth Organics makes a variety of treats with all these attributes and more – free of dairy, peanuts, gluten, tree nuts, and soy – and they taste scrumptious, the way candy is supposed to taste.
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