Esmeraldas 70% Chocolate Bar from Goodnow Farms Chocolate in Sudbury, Massachusetts
Photo Credit: Lori Pedrick; styling by Liz Neily
Whether coupled or single, we’ve always seen Valentine’s Day as an opportunity to treat ourselves. And with a large and ever-growing collection of artisan chocolatiers in every corner of New England, it’s remarkably easy to make good on that promise. The following list celebrates some of our favorite chocolates in every New England state. All offer easy online shopping, so be sure to place your orders before cupid has flown away.
Chef Benoit Raquet is a Belgian native and master chocolatier whose confections have reached cult status in the Nutmeg State. Try Chocolate Pralines filled with passion fruit ganache or honey roasted peanut butter with smoked salt. Valentine’s Day gift boxes are actually made of chocolate (all Fair Trade certified) and filled with heart-shaped treats (we love the Salted Caramel Hearts made with Vermont butter), and chocolate bars are studded with dried strawberries and rose petals.
, Bridgewater, Brookfield, West Hartford, and Westport
When Swedish chef Erik Landergren founded Bridgewater Chocolate in 1995, his goal was to apply European techniques to classic American treats like turtles, peanut butter patties, toffees, barks, and caramels—while also making European-style truffles in flavors like hazelnut and raspberry. The chocolates are lovely, and the packaging is exceptionally pretty—like something from the Gilded Age.
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Allow us to introduce your first farm-to-bonbon chocolatier. “We’re the only people I know of in the world who make single-cow-origin chocolates,” says farmer and chocolatier Kimberly Thorn. Handcrafted in small batches, these truffles, bars, caramels, and other confections are flavored not just with hazelnuts or cinnamon or Earl Grey tea but with the fresh-that-morning milk from a specific cow. For example, caramels all begin with a Jersey cow named Daydream. “Her milk is just so luscious,” Kimberly Thorn says. “It literally is buttery soft. It has a nutty, complex flavor. It rolls off your tongue in a way you just want to lift your shoulders and say, ‘Ooh, that’s so good.’”
Glossy heart bonbons in flavors like raspberry caramel, honey passion fruit, blood orange, little domes filled with Maine maple vanilla cream, or champagne ganache. These are just some of the treats produced by Kate McAleer’s team at their Rockland “chocolate factory.” Don’t miss the
Needhams: a Maine favorite since 1872, filled with coconut mixed with a bit of, stay with us, potato puree. Bixby’s version is rich in coconut flavor and sweet without being cloying.
La Nef began on Monhegan Island as a side project for artists Mandy and Dylan Metrano and soon became a leading Maine chocolate brand. The pair brings careful attention to fair trade, conservation, and sustainability practice at every step of the process, producing a large and varied line of bars and chocolate-covered fruits in flavors like dark Nicaraguan chocolate with dried Maine blueberries and Belgian milk chocolate with toasted almonds and coconut. But there’s more than just chocolate on offer: The Metranos collaborate with artists to create their package designs, and many bars come with download codes for albums from some of their musician friends.
Find a feast for the eyes as well as the taste buds at Ragged Coast Chocolates in Westbrook, Maine.
Photo Credit : Courtesy of Ragged Coast Chocolates
At Ragged Coast, “local” is the watchword. Cream and butter for chocolates and caramels come from nearby dairies, and Down East farms produce the herbs, fruits, and edible flowers the chocolatiers use. Even the rye in whiskey truffles is locally distilled. Chocolate, of course, travels farther—it’s sourced from responsibly cultivated Latin American and Hawaiian trees. Top picks here: rich milk and dark chocolate barks, and truffles in flavors including lavender and hazelnut latte.
Massachusetts is a center for bean-to-bar chocolate, where the chocolatier begins with cacao beans and completes all the steps to winnow, grind, and temper their way to high-quality bars and bonbons. Boho founder Charles Burke sources his organic beans from farmers and small cooperatives to produce a line of milk, white, and dark chocolate bars, some single-source and others flavored with almonds, chai, or coconut and lemongrass.
This café-workshop in North Truro on Cape Cod makes award-winning chocolates from beans sourced directly from small farms. The bars are mostly with some milk, white, and single-origin bars in the mix. Try the chocolate-covered spiced caramels in flavors like Halwa (rose, saffron, pistachio, and almond).
In her Needham workshop, Liron Gal makes some of the most spectacular chocolates we’ve ever seen: gleaming bonbons in bright colors, shiny as lip gloss, and filled with multiple layers of praliné, ganache, caramel, or fruit purees, a mixture of crunch and cream. Gal left a career in high tech to make chocolates during the pandemic, and chocolate lovers are better off for it.
Chocolatier Joshua Needleman is a master of infusions. He packs his fruit-, champagne-, and tea- infused chocolates full of clear, recognizable flavor without ever crossing into the perfumy. His creamy ganache centers and quality chocolate coverings add up to bonbon perfection.
Tom and Monica Rogan believe great chocolate begins at the source, so for the past five years, they’ve traveled to the equatorial cacao-producing regions of Central and South America in search of the best raw materials. “All beans have a personality,” Tom says. “Our bars are not a rubber-stamp product, and it takes a lot of creativity to craft them.” After the beans are fermented and dried at or near the source, they’re brought back to the Rogans’ backyard chocolate kitchen in Sudbury. There, the couple choose the proper roasting profile for each variety and press their own cocoa butter on the way to making a range of exquisite bars, some single origin, others blended with local maple syrup, ground almonds, or rums and whiskeys from local distilleries. We love the Cafe Con Leche bar and the earthy cocoa intensity and jammy fruit flavors of the Esmeraldas bar, whose beans are sourced from the Salazar family farm in Ecuador.
Making good on his commitment to “chocolate as art,” Dancing Lion master chocolatier Richard Tango–Lowy offers an impressive line of bonbons, truffles, and chocolate bars from his New Hampshire shop/café, featuring ingredients like Himalayan coarse salt, crispy almonds, candied citrus, and cayenne.
Inspired by his time living in France and Switzerland in the 1970s and 80s, Larry Burdick set out to make chocolate of exceptional quality. Today, with a flagship store and cafe in Walpole and two Boston locations, his confections are beloved across the region. Start with the signature Chocolate Mice in white, dark, and milk varieties, or the Passion Fruit Raspberry Hearts. And if you haven’t tried the very thick, very rich “drinking chocolate,” you’re in for a revelation
When Elaine McCabe decided to turn a family holiday-candy tradition into a business in 2009, her goal was to deliver a reminder of childhood delight. Made from locally sourced European-style butter, cream, and eggs, and topped with rich Belgian chocolate (milk or dark) and a sprinkling of roasted organic almonds, Red Kite Toffee is decadently addictive, as are the salted caramels, turtles, and nougats. The environmentally friendly retro packaging makes for fun gifting.
The name is an acronym for “Having a Wonderful Time,” which is exactly how we feel when we encounter Miguel Allis’s bonbons. Painted with vibrant swirls of colored cocoa butter, these little jewels come in flavors like Croissant (a crunchy, buttery filling), Espresso Martini, PB&J, Hazelnut Praline, Mezcal, and Coffee Milk (so Rhody!).
Peter and Katie Kelly make their signature toffee by hand, in small batches. It has all the nutty and buttery tones of a great toffee, but what sets it apart is its crisper, more finely grained texture, which protects your teeth from the dreaded toffee stickiness. We love the almond best, but flavors like coffee, peppermint, and coconut almond are also excellent. Be sure to also try their take on turtles, which they call Leathernecks.
When Tom and Nancy Taylor call their chocolates a taste of Vermont, they’re ot kidding. Their Vermont truffles come in flavors like Maple Creemee, Salted Maple Caramel, and locally made Eden Iced Cider. The salted maple caramel comes from Vermont’s own Fat Toad Farm. And the boxes are graced with the artwork of renowned printmaker Sabra Field.
At their Brattleboro shop, John Singer and Dar Tavernier-Singer make a full line of delicious and aesthetically delightful truffles, bars, and bonbons, incorporating Vermont dairy and cheeses, foraged fruits, and local herbs, as well as global spices. Chocolate pine cones are flavored with toasted pine nuts, homegrown rosemary, foraged spruce needle and sea salt. Sheep Milk Baaci are filled with Vermont Shepherd sheep milk yogurt and dark chocolate. We also love their chocolate charcuterie, a line of vegetarian ganache rolls, dusted in cocoa, that’s made to be sliced and enjoyed on a grazing board.
Do you have a favorite New England chocolate maker? Let us know in the comments below!
Amy Traverso
Amy Traverso is the senior food editor at
Yankee and cohost of the public television series
Weekends with Yankee, a coproduction with GBH. Previously, she was food editor at
Boston magazine and an associate food editor at
Sunset magazine. Her work has also been published in
The Boston Globe,
Saveur, and
Travel & Leisure, and she has appeared on
Hallmark Home & Family,
The Martha Stewart Show,
Throwdown with Bobby Flay, and
Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. Amy is the author of
The Apple Lover’s Cookbook, which was a finalist for the Julia Child Award for best first-time author and won an IACP Cookbook Award in the “American” category.
