It is hard for me to believe that it took me this many years to finally trial the delicious chocolate selection from Chocolate Emporium. As a kosher shop, all of their chocolates are Pareve, or dairy-free. That alone will get them mention on Go Dairy Free, but to get our recommendation, they’ve got to be good too … and this company is beyond good.

Every chocolatier has their niche (because really, can you ever have too many chocolate makers?), and in my opinion, Chocolate Emporium fills a very special one. As mentioned, the first niche they address is the dairy-free and kosher community (they also have many offerings for gluten-free and nut-free consumers). But secondly, they offer variety with supreme attention to detail.

Hanukah, Christmas, New Year’s, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Birthdays, Corporate … you name it, they have chocolate for it. And we aren’t talking cheap and cheesy chocolate either. Each chocolate is perfectly molded in cute or fanciful shapes … oh yes, and it tastes delicious too!

The lovely ladies at Chocolate Emporium really do hit on every occasion, as noted by the Happy Birthday chocolate bar they included with my shipment. Talk about insanely sweet customer service!

Diving into that chocolate bar first led me to classify Chocolate Emporium’s core chocolate as a dark, not a semi-sweet, but more in the range of 60 to 70% dark … slight intense cocoa flavor, but sweet enough to appeal to most taste buds. Though I am a huge fan of rich dark chocolates, I truly enjoyed the light buttery sweet aftertaste of their chocolate bar, and the fact that it only possessed a modest hint of bittersweet. It was the type of bar you could easily devour without even noticing and somewhat reminiscent of that oh so addictive candy bar chocolate.

Beyond the chocolate bar, we received a sampling of their Halloween and everyday shapes in bite sized chocolates and large lollipops. My husband's favorite was the Frankenstein, because "he looked so mean." I on the other hand, went for a few of the more "adorable" dark chocolate lollis first ...

However, Chocolate Emporium doesn’t stop with the dark chocolate alone. They also have a very sweet confectioner’s white chocolate that they use to dress up many of their confections. I confess, I am a former white chocolate addict (and a frosting lover), so the Halloween Spider Lollipop on an orange-flavored white chocolate web simply melted in my mouth. When eaten together the dark and orange essence chocolates were sweet bliss. Admittedly, my husband found the confectioner’s chocolate a bit too sweet, but he is purely a dark chocolate fan.

My only qualm was the use of hydrogenated oils in their confectioner’s chocolate. A switch to palm or coconut oil would put them over the top in my books.

For adorable and tasty chocolates that are perfect for gift-giving (perhaps even to yourself?), this is one dairy-free chocolatier that I can certainly recommend.

This is a third party review by Alisa Fleming, author of Go Dairy Free: The Guide & Cookbook. For more information on these products and to purchase, see the Chocolate Emporium Website.

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