Chocolate Continues to Reign Supreme on Valentine’s Day

Regardless of one’s feelings toward Valentine’s Day, there are few who would actually turn down a box of chocolates simply to thumb their noses at the corporate holiday. An aphrodisiac and an easy gift besides, chocolate’s place as a classic component of the season of love is well deserved.

 

 

“Chocolate is one of those rare things that manages to be both deeply personal and universally understood,” said Lauren Blanco, co-founder and CEO of Markham & Fitz in Bentonville. “When you give someone quality chocolate, you’re giving them an experience — not just something sweet but a moment to slow down and taste something made with care.”

 

 

While its versatility and ubiquity is much appreciated everywhere from convenience store shelves to artisanal counters, the same traits can make it difficult to know just what to grab when shopping for that special someone. Following the latest food trends can be one way to catch a loved one’s eye and tickle their sweet tooth at the same time.

 

“The new hot item is Dubai chocolate. That’s one everybody’s going crazy for,” said Richard Morris, franchise owner at Rocket Fizz in Little Rock. “Then they have another one called Angel Hair, which is like a chocolate with cotton candy stuffed inside of it.”

 

 

Dubai chocolate, made from milk chocolate bars stuffed with pistachio-tahini cream and strands of kadayif pastry, has taken the world by storm and inspired scores of variations on the form. In addition to popular Dubai truffles, Kilwins in Little Rock has its own housemade treats, such as Dubai Buckeyes and Dubai Delights, both of which owner David Lister esteems even more highly than the original.

 

 

Neither comes close to the true Valentine’s powerhouse, however. Annual demand for chocolate-dipped strawberries turns the holiday into nothing short of a Super Bowl moment for Kilwins. It is far and away the busiest day of the year, Lister said.

 

“We get through about 150 to 200 pounds of berries on a typical Valentine’s Day,” he said. “With it being a weekend this year, we’re probably anticipating 250 to 300 pounds of berries.”

 

Timing is key when it comes to gifting a showstopping box of berries. The biggest mistake people are liable to make, Lister said, is picking up their strawberries on a Friday and giving them to their loved ones on Saturday. The problem is once the fruit is enveloped in chocolate, the product’s shelf life drops off a cliff.

 

“The golden rule with berries is they need to be consumed on the day that they’re purchased, and every single berry that we sell in this store is made on the day that it’s sold,” Lister said. “They’re going to be freshly made every single day, regardless of whether it’s the middle of the summer, the middle of the winter or on Valentine’s Day.”

 

As for Lister, his Valentine’s Day will start at about 1 a.m., and the first berry will be dipped at about 2 a.m. With the big day falling on a Saturday this year, he anticipates dipping nonstop until about 8 p.m. unless, of course, the berries run out sooner. A word of advice: The best practice is to call ahead and reserve an order sooner rather than later.

 

“I can promise you, within 20 minutes of me stopping dipping, we’ll have sold out, and we’ll be getting complaints that we’ve got no berries,” Lister said.

 

Skeptics and those unlucky lovers scouring supermarkets for the last heart-shaped box on the shelf might want to contend that, as far as these things go, “a chocolate is a chocolate is a chocolate.” In reality, even nonfoodies can discern between a high-end bar and so-so sweets. Sometimes the difference can be sniffed out from the very moment it is unwrapped.

 

“Usually, mass-produced chocolates contain vanilla or vanilla flavoring. Vanilla can taste good, but it is generally used as a flavor masker, something to hide deficiencies in the cacao itself and create a homogenous flavor,” Blanco said. “Our chocolate or other high-quality chocolates I find usually do not contain vanilla because they are allowing the higher-quality cacao to shine in the product. We want the flavor of the unique cacao bean to become a central part of the flavor experience, and we find that vanilla often can detract from that.”

 

Without filler or masking ingredients, the quality of what remains is easy to taste. A chocolate-covered caramel from Markham & Fitz, for example, has real butter, dairy and vanilla in the caramel and only three ingredients in the chocolate: cocoa beans, organic cane sugar and cocoa butter. Simplicity and authenticity, Blanco said, allow artisanal products to stand out from their mass-produced peers. Kilwins likewise takes its proprietary recipe and exclusivity seriously — everything is made fresh, and Kilwins chocolate cannot be found at other stores, Lister said.

 

“Over the years, supermarket chocolate, there’s less and less chocolate in it, more and more sugar in it, and as a result, people have really forgotten what proper chocolate should taste like,” he said. “Coming into Kilwins, it’s a quality product. We’re very proud of the quality of our chocolate, whether it’s milk, whether it’s white chocolate — and ours is a real white chocolate, not just a pale imitation that you get in the supermarket. Our dark chocolate is especially really, really good.”

 

 

In that regard, chocolate follows a similar rule of thumb to other Valentine’s Day gifts, such as jewelry or an upscale dinner date. More often than not, one gets what one pays for.

 

“It takes four to five days just to make the chocolate. We roast the beans in-house, grind them for multiple days — the longest step — mold them into bars and hand-wrap them,” Blanco said. “There’s a soul to artisanal products that you can literally taste, and you lose that soul in industrial processes. Industrially made products are cheaper for a reason.”

 

Markham & Fitz has Valentine’s gift sets and a seasonal selection of chocolate bars, including Berry Bisous, which is 70 percent dark chocolate with raspberries, strawberries and fleur de sel, and Orange Creamsicle, comprised of goat-milk white chocolate and orange extract. Kilwins has classic heart-shaped and square boxes of the good stuff, in addition to the option of hand-selecting sweets from behind the counter for a more personal touch. That is not even to mention the truffles, caramels and other delightful mouthfuls to be found.

 

“We have enough of everything to satisfy most tastes, whether it’s nuts, whether it’s creams, whether it’s truffles, a mixture of all of it,” Lister said. “Caramel-covered apples, they are always very popular, and we do a few nice little designs on those the week of Valentine’s Day. We’ll have some specially decorated cookies. There’s something for everyone, whether it’s your classmates in elementary school right through to the larger boxes of chocolates for a special one at home.”

 

There might yet be a place for more run-of-the-mill chocolates in the Valentine’s Day panoply, however, if only to prove one was listening when a significant other mentioned a favorite childhood candy. Hunting down that bit of nostalgia, while not expensive, can be priceless in the end. Sometimes that kid-in-a-candystore feeling is a thoughtful gift in its own right, and after all, it is still the thought that counts.

 

“We have everything from your common chocolates that you find everywhere, Reese’s and Hershey’s and all that, and then we have some European selections, Cadbury, Milka, things of that nature, imported candies,” Morris said. “We’re going to have a lot more of the hard-to-find candies and what you don’t just find anywhere. Anything you can think of that you haven’t seen or can’t get your hands on, we’re the place to come check. Odds are, we have it.”

 

 

All that is to say: Whether shopping for family and friends or treating oneself, Valentine’s Day is as good as any occasion to splurge on whatever sweet treat one likes best.

 

“Anything that brings people back into a chocolate shop and gets them to fall back in love with chocolates, in my opinion, is a good thing,” Lister said.

 

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