Chocolate gifts for Valentine’s Day are a  traditional sign of love and affection, and this year Bittersweet Café, the Bay Area’s bean-to-bar Bittersweet Origins chocolate maker and chocolate cafés, has a full array of its own chocolate collections and special gift packaging ready for your special Valentine sweetheart. 
Bittersweet’s three Bay Area locations are a Valentine gift central with delicious, high quality chocolate gifts ranging from $4.95 to $34.95.  

Valentine tins, Share the Love tins and Big Love Pails are popular Bittersweet signature gifts.  The Mint Tin includes Dark Chocolate Holland Mints and Dark Chocolate Peppermint Shortbreads while the Fruit and Nut Tin features Dark Chocolate Dried Strawberries, Dark Chocolate Cherries and Dark Chocolate Pistachios.
 
The Share the Love Tin provides a quarter pound each of Mint Mix (Dark Chocolate Holland Mints, Dark Chocolate Peppermint Shortbreads) and Fruit and Nut Mix (Dark Chocolate Dried Strawberries, Dark Chocolate Cherries, and Dark Chocolate Pistachios), Solid Milk Hearts and Solid Dark Chocolate Hearts. 

Fabulous handmade Bittersweet truffles are available in a variety of flavors, from hand-rolled dark, Fleur de Sel, raspberry liquor-spiked Framboise, and the scintillating Spicy, to the elegant finish of heart-shaped Blood Orange, Passion fruit and Cinnamon.

Other unique Bittersweet Valentine offerings are the Love Letter and the Tasting Tins.  The Love Letter is a modern-retro envelope, enclosing a note card, one New Tree Alpha Disc (an unusual and incredibly delicious bar -flax seeds give it an unusual crunch and make it rich in anti-oxidants) one of their best-selling Vosges Mini Bars and a $10.00 Bittersweet Gift Card.  

Tasting Tins include How Many Ways Do I Love Thee (a wide selection of small bits of some of the world’s most delectable chocolates) and the popular Heart of Darkness Collection.   The collection also includes an outline of the most recent findings about the health benefits of chocolate with high cacao content.

And, for those quick and inexpensive gift needs, Bittersweet is offering Chinese Take-Away Valentine Boxes with Solid Dark and Milk chocolate hearts, along with Raspberry Cream, Caramel and Mint Crunch Hearts.

About Bittersweet  Origins and Café
Bittersweet Origins is a manufacturing and retailing company which creates craft chocolate and coffee in handmade, micro-batches to engage the senses and the mind.  Bittersweet Café retail stores’ ambience and furnishings reflect the one-of-a-kind nature of its chocolate bars, chocolate drinks and coffees.  The warm and welcoming spaces furnished with unique tables, benches, carts and artwork from local craftspeople and artists create a gathering place for the community to savor locally made chocolate delicacies, coffee and tea.  The Bittersweet Cafes are located in San Francisco on Fillmore Street, College Avenue in Oakland and the Rose Garden Shopping Center in Danville.  For more information, visit www.bittersweetcafe.com/ or call 510-705-1860.

Gnosis Chocolate is handcrafted Chocolate using the finest 100% Organic raw ingredients.  Each bar is dairy, soy, refined sugar, cholesterol and gluten free. Created by a certified holistic health counselor, Gnosis Chocolate was created keeping the health, nutrition, and amazing qualities of chocolate as a nutrient-dense super-food maintained. High quality raw cacao beans are combined with various nuts, fruits, and medicinal herbs to create the various flavors offer.  Gnosis Chocolate is based in Astoria, NY were every bar is mixed, poured, and wrapped by hand. Gnosis Chocolate can also create create custom and private labels to personalized and have your chocolate  wrapped for any occasion: business, special day, or a much deserved gift to yourself!

Not only is Gnosis Chocolate conscious about its chocolate, its also dedicated to improving the plant as well. All Gnosis Chocolate products are made by hand, no machines, and all the ingredients are sourced sustainably.  The packing on the bars are 100% recycled and FSC certified, plus the labels are made from corn!  10% of the profits from Gnosis Chocolate are donated to The Fruit Tree Planting Foundation.

All bars are 2 oz. A few of the flavors offered:

Simplicity

Ingredients:Cacao Beans, Cacao Butter, Agave Nectar, Vanilla Bean, Crystal Manna blue-green algae.

The essential chocolate bar.  Raw, organic cacao combined with Crystal Manna for mood and concentration enhancement. Vanilla beans are blend in Vanilla Bean for immune support. Making this bar  Simply Gnosis.

Cashew Goji Berry

Ingredients: Cacao Beans, Cacao Butter, Cashews, Goji Berries, Black Currants, Agave Nectar, Vanilla Bean, Crystal Manna blue-green algae.

A fusion of East and West whose taste and texture you’ll not forget. Soft-sweet goji berries gift their antioxidants, protein, and vitamins B6 and beta carotene for your beauty, and blood health. Rich in both protein and heart-healthy oleic acid, nuggets of raw, crunchy cashews nestled happily in-between.

Cool Peppermint

The Cool Peppermint gives you  fresh and clean in a bar. Containing chlorophyll,  a powerful anti-oxidant and tissue repairer, and peppermint, often called “the world’s oldest medicine”, which calms the stomach, and stimulates the body and mind.

Lemon Berry Rose

Ingredients:Cacao Beans, Cacao Butter, Dried Strawberries, Goji Berries, Black Currants, Cherries, Almonds, Cashews, Agave Nectar, Freeze-Dried Strawberries, Rose Hips, Rose Petals, Camu Camu Berry, Passion Flower, Lemon Zest, Vanilla Bean, Crystal Manna, Lemon Essential Oil, Rose Essential Oil.

Lemon Berry Rose’s ingredients support the immunity power of Vitamin C. Strawberries, goji berries, and cherries supply iron and a host of other benefits, while the Roses just make this a romantic and fragrant bar.

Pomegranate Acai

Ingredients:Cacao Beans, Cacao Butter, Brazil Nuts, Black Currants, Agave Nectar, Barberries, Pomegranate Powder, Acai Powder, Crystal Manna, Vanilla Bean.

The Pomegranate Acai Bar combines the antioxidant protection of acai and pomegranate with the raw, organic cacao.

SuperChoc

Check out Chocolate.com for more information on Gnosis Chocolate.

We featured Sweetriot in our Chocolate Manufacturers – Guide for Chocoholics.

The unBar from sweetriot

About Sweetriot:

In October of 2005 Sarah E. Endline founded sweetriot with a dream of changing the world and the candy industry at the same time!

About the products:

sweetriot broke into the candy category with its original ‘peaces’ line. Three years later sweetriot introduced another innovative, yummy product to the market called the unBar. The bar is available in two flavors. Flavor 65-65% dark chocolate with crunchy cacao ‘peaces’, and Flavor 70- 70% dark chocolate with crunchy cacao ‘peaces’ and plump golden raisins. This unofficial bar is all natural, gluten free, dairy free and only 45-50 calories per ‘mega peace’. Oh and course just like the lovable recyclable, reusable tin there is a surprise inside!

Sweetriot is creating a sweet movement to fix the world by sourcing their cacao directly in Latin America, using recyclable, reusable packaging which features emerging artists, and by only using all-natural, healthy ingredients for their dark chocolate products.

Trio Cacao Nibs from sweetriot.com

Recognition:

This socially and environmentally responsible firm was nominated as one of the 2008 & 2009 World Blu’s Most Democratic Workplaces. In addition, it is the first and only chocolate company to offset all of its carbon emissions and even offers an option to offset the emissions from the making of your chocolate!

sweetriot has been featured by Fortune Small Business, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times as well as Shape, New York Magazine, Women’s Health, Instyle, and Gourmet.

Hollywood loves Sweetriot!

Celeb rioters include Sarah Jessica Parker, Drew Barrymore, Eva Longoria, Kevin Bacon, Jerry Seinfeld and Harry Connick Jr. to foodie chefs Rachael Ray and Gordon Ramsay.

For more info, please visit sweetriot.com.