Our Chocolate Santa Boot

This may be Santa’s boot to many of you, but to me it is St. Nick’s boot. Growing  up in Croatia, St. Nicholas was the only one that brought gifts. Maybe because Santa was too busy working in the U.S.!

On the night of December 5^th, my brother and I would search for our dad’s largest boots and place them outside our bedroom window. I would nicely polish my boot because I knew that St. Nicholas brought more gifts to good children and my dad seemed to encourage that thought. Now that I think about it, he wanted clean boots! My brother on the other hand did not bother to clean anything. We made sure to line the boot with a plastic bag because we did not want smelly candy. This surely wasn’t a fuzzy stocking hanging over the fireplace.

We clearly marked the names on the boot to make sure Krampus knows in which boot to leave the sticks. He accompanied St. Nicholas and left golden sticks for good kids and silver sticks for bad kids. St. Nicholas always brought candy, but Krampus occasionally left some regular sticks, more often in my brother’s boot. It is a very special memory I have, waking up on St. Nicholas’ Day and running outside in the cold with my brother to get our boots filled with fruit and our favorite chocolate bars. I did not imagine then that I would be making a real chocolate boot filled with assorted chocolates. There are even chocolate covered pretzel “sticks”!

Our boots in the window. Notice which one is cleaner!

Marzipan is a sweet confection made from finely ground almonds. It has the consistency of a dense cookie dough. While somewhat common in its plain form, it can be hard to find good chocolate covered marzipan outside of Europe.

At Sweet Designs, we make two varieties of chocolate covered marzipan, pistachio and fruit. The pistachio marzipan is the more popular of the two and we offer it in a bar form or a bite size ball. It is decorated with toasted green coconut. The fruit marzipan also has a loyal following and contains finely chopped pieces of orange peel and glace apricot inside.

Chocolate Hazelnut Clusters

Hazelnuts…

With or without chocolate, I’ll choose them any day over any other nuts.  But what is it about hazelnuts that makes them less popular compared to almonds, cashews, pecans and peanuts? Over the years we noticed that they always sell less and that customers will get a box of mixed clusters, but tell us to skip the hazelnuts. Is it a European thing? It must be! Growing up in Croatia, every dessert, cookies, ice cream and chocolate was made better with the addition of hazelnuts. Other flavors do not even stand a chance! It is great that they grow in my grandma’s back yard and every summer I visit, our fun family activity is to crack the hazelnuts together.

It seems like all the great European chocolates have some hazelnuts or hazelnut praline in them. We make a few different hazelnut products; hazelnut clusters, dark chocolate Tuscany truffles (chopped hazelnuts in the ganache center and a whole hazelnut on the top) and hazelnut truffles (a hazelnut ganache covered in dark chocolate and rolled in ground hazelnuts). We also make our honey nougat called Torrone which has chopped hazelnuts and almonds inside. They are all amazing!

I wonder why people skip hazelnuts, do they not like the taste or are hazelnuts the ‘weird’ nut and are not even given a chance? They taste great to me, I like them the same here as in Europe. In fact, a couple of our customers who have traveled to Europe came back with a new taste for hazelnuts.

Hazelnuts have to be toasted just enough to give them a nice crunch. Ours are imported from Turkey and we toast them ourselves without any oils.  Hazelnut farming has been the chief form of livelihood around Black Sea and that’s where most hazelnuts come from.

Tuscany and Hazelnut Truffles

As you may have known, nuts are good for you (not roasted in oil and salted though!) They are one of the best plant sources of protein. They are rich in fiber, omega 3, and antioxidants.

Writing this post, I developed a craving for a dark chocolate hazelnut cluster, in my opinion, the best combination, pure and delicious! Give hazelnuts a chance….I will treat you to a sample in our store!

Mini Clear Ballotin

Have you ever been to a wedding where you forgot the favor on the table or reluctantly saved it in a drawer full of other such trinkets? The purpose of wedding and bridal shower favors is to thank your guests for sharing the joy of these special moments in your life. There are usually many things to be planned for your special day, and favors may be one of the last decisions you make without putting a lot of thought into it.

The favors do not need to be extravagant or expensive; rather they should simply be something your guests can enjoy. We have received great feedback from our customers on our bridal shower and wedding favors. Gourmet chocolates in elegant packaging are sure to be enjoyed, and don’t be surprised if your guests try to sneak an extra one.

There are two things to focus on when selecting favors, the chocolates and the packaging. The most popular chocolates for favors are our truffles. They come in a dozen different flavors with most people choosing flavors such as plain chocolate, raspberry and mint. You are able to select any of our other chocolates to include in your favors.

Our most popular favor is a two piece truffle box, where you can include one milk and one dark chocolate truffle. If your wedding or shower has a certain color scheme we have just about every color box and ribbon to match. Many people also choose to personalize their box with names which adds a special touch to the favor.

Bride and Groom Strawberries

We think that the most important question when buying favors is: “What is the best favor I can give to my guests within my budget?” We have a favor for any budget and we like to get creative with our customers’ ideas. Some of our favors include different style boxes filled with truffles or assorted chocolates, candy bars, chocolate covered pretzels, molded wedding bells, chocolate umbrellas, and mini chocolate high heel shoes.

We can also make custom favors based on your ideas. We have a large amount of molds from anchors to the letter ‘Z’. Molded chocolate pieces make a nice personalized favor and reveal something about the couple. Do you have something to go with the chocolate that you would like to give to your guests? Bring it in and we will package it with the chocolate favor. Chocolate bride and groom strawberries and apples, we make them! Chocolate truffles with real edible flowers on top for spring or chocolate leaves for a fall wedding…we make them too!

In the world of favors, the possibilities are endless, in the world or chocolate favors, possibilities are also endless and with an added benefit…they are also delicious!

Celebrate Life With Chocolate!

Two weeks before Mother’s Day, she was opposed to giving me the mold because the chocolate shoe did not go over well a few years ago and it was difficult to make.  Little did she know my idea would be even more difficult to make! When I finally got my hands on the mold, I decided to make my version of the shoe. I had milk, dark and white chocolate to work with. I started to think of my high heels and the ones that I wish I had. Polka dots! My best friend has a pair and they look perfect!

With a lot of trial and error, I perfected the shoe, and to my surprise my aunt liked it and suggested a white chocolate flower for the front. Although it looks great empty I wanted it to look more delicious and beautiful. I decided to fill it with truffles, our finest and most decadent chocolates.

We would have never expected what an adventure our chocolate high heel would become. What started as a Mother’s Day gift turned into bridal shower gift, a birthday gift, a graduation gift, a retirement gift, Christmas and Valentine’s Day gifts, and it was even used as a corporate gift! There were times when I felt like I worked in a shoe factory!

Customer Stories

It has been fun hearing our customers’ stories. We’ve heard “She loves shoes!” many times.  The most common story we hear is how the recipient ate the truffles but is saving the shoe and displaying it. We did not expect that people would be keeping the shoe for a long time, after all you can’t wear it!  We started telling customers that two weeks is more than enough to admire the shoe and show to friends, but it is really too delicious not to eat. After giving this advice we heard of an elderly mother who received the shoe from her son and displayed it in a glass cabinet for a while. After he told her that she had to start eating the shoe, it was all gone the next day!

Another story we heard was about a husband who gave it to his wife but got tired of looking at the shoe on display and ate it himself. Finally, the most creative story we have heard is about a lady who ate the toe first to make a peep toe shoe. Next she ate the heel to make it a flat. See our reenactment to the right.

Mother’s Day Edition

To make the shoe unique for this Mother’s day, we are combining chocolate and real flowers. Recently, we have been making chocolate truffles with small crystallized flowers for special orders, mainly bridal shower favors. Crystallized Flower Company in Willoughby, Ohio grows edible flowers and preserves them in sugar and meringue. The flowers are free of pesticides and chemicals. Their crystallized rose seemed like a perfect match with our chocolate high heel. This special edition shoe is made to order and can be picked up or delivered locally. Our chocolate high heel with the white chocolate flower is always in stock and can be shipped anywhere in the country.

It has been great to see how many women and men express their passion for high heel shoes. And chocolate, of course!

Celebrate life with chocolate…and shoes!

So what’s the secret recipe? Well we can’t give that away, but we can tell you that there is a little bit of dark chocolate in our milk chocolate and a little bit of milk in our dark chocolate. This makes a milk chocolate that is not too sweet with a rich chocolaty flavor. Likewise, our dark chocolate is a lot smoother than other dark chocolates without the bitterness or unpleasant aftertaste. In fact, our plain dark chocolate discs are one of our best selling items.

So why choose Sweet Designs Chocolate? Because it tastes good! We invite you to stop by and try one of our chocolate discs to taste the goodness for yourself.