Burdick’s Chocolates in Walpole, NH not only has the chocolate shop, but also an award-winning restaurant serving delectable French cuisine (truffle, fennel and apple salad, roast duckling or sea scallops with black tea and caviar). The rich pastries — chocolate mousse cake, chocolate lemon cake and linzer torte with raspberries — are to die for.
The ganache-filled chocolate mice are adorable and delicious, as are the chocolate penguins, looking dapper in their dark and white chocolate tuxedos.
Monica’s Chocolates in Lubec, ME is owned by Monica Elliott, a native of Peru, who emigrated to Lubec in 1999, bringing with her recipes for Peruvian caramel and chocolate. She makes all her chocolates by hand in her beautifully decorated shop.
The raspberry truffles, Sicilian marzipans covered in bittersweet chocolate and the dark chocolate bonbons with the plum centers surrounded by Peruvian caramel will have you swooning.
Lake Champlain Chocolates in Burlington, VT was started more than 25 years ago by Jim Lampman, a restaurant entrepreneur who used to give gifts of expensive chocolates to his restaurant staff.
One day his chef confessed that the chocolates were terrible, and Lampman challenged him to make something better. What the chef came up with were truffles made with dark Belgian chocolate and Vermont butter and cream. From those first truffles, in flavors of cappuccino, vanilla malt, raspberry and champagne, a chocolate factory was born.
But, the mainstay of Lake Champlain Chocolates is its Five Star Bars — dense chunky bars packed with fruits and nuts covered in dark Belgian chocolate. The candy bars are so good that “Vogue” magazine has named them “the ultimate chocolate bar” and they were featured in Steve Almond’s book “Candyfreak.”
Think of a visit to any of these shops as what being turned loose in Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory might be like.
— Contributed by Fran Folsom