When we travel, which hasn't been often for us, we not only figure out what sightseeing we want to do and what hotels to stay at, but a huge part of it revolves around the food. Of course it does !! I look at others who deal with food on the fly, meaning they'll just grab something with no aforethought, and I'm thinking... NO f'ing way. I want the scoop on what's good, what isn't, to include meal food, snack-type foods, and my favorite, the sweet factor. Gotta hit local bakery and chocolate shops and gotta know ahead of time where those are and when they're open. As is the case with Vermont, we found A GREAT MANY places either close early (or earlier than we'd prefer) or aren't even open the days we were floating through the various towns. However, Lake Champlain Chocolates was one of the few places that is open seven days a week. Yay, no pressure to beat the clock here.
Inviting presentation of beautifully crafted chocolates, and let me tell you, they tasted as wonderful as they looked. We bought and devoured the following:
1. chocolate covered orange rinds - excellent quality chocolate and extremely fresh orange rind.
2. chocolate covered apricots - same excellent chocolate, but SUPER IMPRESSED with how soft and fresh the dried apricot slices were. Really plump and easy to bite into, and the chocolate just melted in our mouths. The BEST I've had !!
3. chocolate caramels - hard to go wrong with these. Delicious... and just the right amount of chew.
4. Hazelnut truffle, champagne truffle, and a piece of toffee - we only bought one of each of these and we're sorry that was all. They were delicious, but only getting one small bite of each wasn't enough. It's difficult to know how much to get; plus we didn't want to overindulge at the beginning of our trip. Now I'm thinking, shoulda overindulged, lol. Oh well.
This is a great place to stop if you want something sweet, if you want INCREDIBLY FRESH chocolates, not to mention DELICIOUS chocolates, and I understand that they are really well known for their hot chocolate, too !! However, we were there during an unseasonably hot summer day (according to the locals), so we were vying for nothing but cooling off type things. Anyway, if you're reading this review, and you're in Stowe, GO HERE !!! (They have other locations in other parts of Vermont, too, but this is the one we descended upon. read more