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All products featured on Bon Appétit are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Are you eating chocolate right now? Do you want to be? Well, look no further. These days, you can get chocolate bars, bonbons, truffles and more from artisan chocolate makers across the world delivered straight to your doorstep. Fancy something that tastes like a grown up Mounds bar? Go for the Smooth Coconut Praline bar from Dr. Bronner’s. Looking for an option that’s as visually stunning as it is delicious? Check out the jewel-like treasures crafted by Stick With Me Sweets. Whether you’re a chocolate lover yourself or you’re looking for a gift, we’ve got you covered. All the best chocolates—from lacquered, hand-painted bonbons to single-origin, small batch bars—are a mere click away.
The Bars
This Seattle chocolatier made me question my commitment to dark chocolate. I did not expect mango plantain milk chocolate (flecked with crispy bits of plantain chips) and cayenne Veracruz orange white chocolate (salty with just the right amount of heat) to be my favorites in its 10-bar sampler set, but here we are! Every day is an opportunity for growth! And if dark chocolate really is more your jam, you’ll find flavors like black fig pistachio (72%) and orange blossom espresso (61%) in there too. For every three ounces of chocolate sold, jcoco donates the cost of a meal to partner food banks in Washington, California, and New York, so do a good deed and buy in bulk.
Dutch chocolate brand Tony’s Chocolonely is something of a contradiction. On the one hand, its zany 1960s circus packaging screams “Hey, our brand is wacky!” On the other, its mission is dead serious: ending child labor and slavery in the chocolate supply chain. At a whopping 6.35 ounces, the bars are enormous compared to most of the others on this list. I chopped up its milk caramel sea salt bar and folded it into Claire Saffitz’s Malted “Forever” Brownies (a very good idea) and hid its dark milk pretzel toffee bar from my partner (I apologize, Margaret).
If you’ve ever used a piece of chocolate in lieu of a spoon to eat nut butter straight from the jar, then Fine & Raw’s almond chunky is the chocolate bar for you. BA’s commerce editor Carina Finn likes to keep a stash these in her tote bag for on-the-go snacking emergencies. This Brooklyn-based chocolatier specializes in raw dark chocolate sweetened with coconut sugar, so all of its products are free from soy, gluten, dairy, and refined sugars. Fine & Raw’s Chocolate Relief Package—which comes with chocolate bars, chunkies, truffles, and a full jar of chocolate hazelnut spread—makes an ideal gift for anyone who’s going through it, and yes, that includes yourself.
Most chocolate is made by roasting fermented cacao beans, but Raaka’s single-origin bars are entirely unroasted. This makes for a brighter, fruitier chocolate—think about the difference between a lightly roasted coffee and dark French roast—that lets the raw ingredients shine. The Brooklyn-based chocolate company makes everything from classic (oat) milk to flavors like bananas foster and pure cacao with strawberry and coconut. Try their full-size bars, taste-test from a variety set, or pick up a pack of minis to satisfy that sweet tooth on the go.
This Austin bean-to-bar company mashes up Colombian chocolate with South Asian flavors like vanilla fennel, saffron milk, and masala chai.
Each offering from this Icelandic bean-to-bar company comes wrapped in paper patterned with a different animal—unicorns for the Caramel + Milk, swans for the Lakkrís + Raspberry (a licorice lover’s dream), and aggro crows for the charcoal-hued Black N’ Burnt Barley, which tastes like boricha and is every bit as metal as it sounds.
Alter Eco’s chocolate is good—you’ll find its Brown Butter bars stashed all around my house—but it’s the commitment to sustainable farming practices that makes this my go-to grocery store choice. Alter Eco’s recently launched foundation is helping cacao cooperatives in Ecuador and the Dominican Republic transition to a system of regenerative agroforestry, so farming can be part of a diverse forest ecosystem rather than driving its destruction.
Once you see the packaging on Casa Bosques single-origin bars, it will come as no surprise that founder Rafael Prieto’s day job is running a design studio. The flavors range from your average sea salt and dark chocolate bar to a toasted buckwheat number, and all of Casa Bosques’s chocolate is made tree-to-bar in Mexico using pure white “Criollo” cacao beans sourced from small ranches throughout the country.
BA contributor Devorah Lev-Tov is a self-proclaimed craft chocolate snob who is unashamedly willing to shell out $15 on a bar that’s worth her while. Imagine her surprise (and delight) at finding out that the $5.49 colorfully wrapped chocolate bars from a brand known for their soap (yes, soap) are not only sustainably and ethically sourced, but also delicious. “If you ask me hazelnut is the best nut, which is why the Crunchy Hazelnut Butter bar has become a new favorite,” she writes. These bars are absolutely divine when enjoyed on their own, but they’re also affordable enough that you could just as easily chop one up and throw it into your next batch of chocolate chip cookies.
Upstate New York–based Fruition Chocolate Works makes one of BA food director Chris Morocco’s favorite chocolate bars—a bar of chocolate that is, in his opinion, “the absolute best that can be obtained by mere mortals.” And get this: It’s milk chocolate. “Sometimes I just want to eat something accessible and enjoyable without embarking on a cerebral tasting exercise,” says Chris. “Somewhere in between 100% cacao—which, let’s be real, no one wants—and crappy milk chocolate, there’s something that delivers on quality and flavor but is still approachable.” For Chris, that’s Fruition’s dark milk chocolate bar. Made with 68% cacao sourced from Peru’s Marañón Canyon, it’s craveable, balanced, and incredibly satisfying—so much so that it may even convert some die-hard dark chocolate connoisseurs.
Helmed by a father-daughter team based out of southwest Missouri, Askinosie is dedicated not just to making great chocolate, but to championing ethical practices, sustainability, and community enhancement too. They also happen to make a white chocolate bar that BA contributor Christine Clark thinks will change the mind of even the most staunch white chocolate skeptic. That’s because Askinosie’s White Chocolate Nibble Bar isn’t like most other white chocolates. White chocolate is made up mostly of cocoa butter, and rather than source this from some large manufacturer like most producers, Askinosie takes beans sourced from a single farm in Davao, Philippines, and presses them in-house. “Doing so results in a much more nuanced product that’s a rarity in the industry,” Clark explains. “Rather than the kind of latex-y flavor that I get in a lot of white chocolate, Askinosie’s bar tastes like milk chocolate and a cozy mug of steamed, frothed milk had a baby.” It’s “made with the thoughtfulness of your favorite natural wine, but with a flavor and texture that feels like the grown-up version of a Hershey’s Cookies ’N’ Creme bar.” Need we say more?
The Bonbons and Truffles
Oakland-based psychiatrist turned chocolatier Kimberly Yang crafts artful, brightly colored bonbons that are almost too pretty to eat. The blood orange speculoos truffle features layers of citrusy ganache and hazelnut praliné studded with those buttery spiced cookies you get when you fly Delta. The coffee caramel, which looks like a cappuccino cup for dolls, has a perfectly bitter edge thanks to Taiwanese coffee and sugar that’s just this side of burnt.
It doesn’t get classier than La Maison du Chocolat, whose ganaches, pralinés, and truffles have been handcrafted on the outskirts of Paris since 1977.
Ghana-born, New York–raised Selassie Atadika lived in 41 African countries during her time working as a child protection officer and emergency specialist for UNICEF. Now, she’s paying tribute to the diverse flavors of the continent through her truffles, which come in flavors like Cape Malay curry, Ethiopian berbere, and Moroccan mint tea. Each one is made from single-origin Ghanian cacao by an all-female team of chocolatiers.
With over 140 years of chocolate-making under their belt, Italian chocolate company Venchi now sells its individually wrapped chocolates, bars, and gelatos in more than 70 countries across the globe. But it’s the pale pink-wrappered Gianduiotti that BA contributor Lauren Corona loves most. “Made from hazelnut paste, cocoa, and sugar, they’re pretty much solid Nutella, and they’re beyond incredible,” writes Corona. Gianduiotti were first created in Piedmont, Italy, and Corona remembers them as the most highly anticipated addition to the care packages she’d receive from her Italian nonna growing up. Now, thanks to Venchi, she can easily find them online, in specialty stores, and even in some grocery stores—and so can you.
In the hands of someone less skilled, green chili queso or chicken fried steak truffles would be gimmicky at best and downright disgusting at worst. But Austin chocolatier Nicole Patel manages to pull it off, concocting savory-sweet truffles that are more than just novelty. Her Taste of the South collection includes both more traditional options like mint julep and banana pudding as well as a Frito pie truffle, which features a corn chip center and a cheese, chive, and ghost pepper ganache that did not come to play.
New Jersey–based spouses Roger Rodriguez and Julia Choi Rodriguez create single-origin bars, vegan barks, and “functional” white chocolate bars made with superfoods and antioxidant-rich ingredients like Diaspora Co. turmeric. But the bonbons, which include flavors like milk and honey, salted caramel, and spiced maca, are really where it’s at. Follow the company’s recommendation and leave them out at room temperature for 20 minutes to allow the chocolate ganache inside to soften for a truly sublime melt-in-your-mouth experience.
These are the chocolates that haunt my dreams. Everything that Susanna Yoon and her team make is exquisite, from the shiny, jewel-like bonbons to the Betterfinger bars which, unlike Bart Simpson’s candy bar of choice, don’t get stuck in your teeth. The bonbon collections come disguised in a box that looks like a book—handy if you decide you’re not in a sharing mood. Want something less ornate? Try the wonderfully chewy caramels (which come in flavors like Brown Buttered Macadamia Nut and Yuzu) or peanut butter cups (choose from dark or milk) that’ll put your Reese’s to shame.
While many of Carolina Quijano’s single-origin chocolate bars are simple by design, made with only cacao and unrefined cane sugar to highlight the chocolate’s terroir, her bonbons and barks nod to the company’s home in Miami’s Little Havana, incorporating flavors like plantain and locally grown guava. There are also, crucially, chocolate-coated potato chips.
The Others
Chocolatier and nutritional health counselor may not seem like professions that go hand in hand, but Baltimore-based Jinji Fraser has carved out an extremely delicious niche. Her confections may be free of dairy, gluten, and refined sugar, but you won’t miss them. The dark chocolate hazelnut spread is absolute mad genius sorcery.
This third-generation, family-run confectioner in Kansas City, Missouri, makes “old people” chocolates, and I mean that in the best possible way. Made using Swiss techniques, the chocolate-enrobed orange peels, roasted almonds, and marzipan sticks are absolute classics that need no improvement. Be sure to pick up a jar of their signature hot chocolate for when the cold weather hits—it’s made with dark chocolate rather than cocoa powder, and they even make a spicy version.
San Francisco’s Che Fico (one of BA’s top 10 restaurants of 2018) does wonderful things with chocolate—like this chocolate budino with candied walnuts that we lost our minds over. But if you don’t want to bust out the Silpat and make caramel, Che Fico’s gianduja is the instant chocolate fix you need. What is it? Nutella, more or less, but made with high-quality chocolate from Guittard and no palm oil. Spread it on toast slicked with salted butter, fold it into homemade Rice Krispies Treats, or, if you are me, eat it right off the spoon.