For Valentine’s Day this year I received a wonderful gift from one of my favorite chocolatiers in Boston, L.A. Burdick. It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of their thick and wonderful hot chocolates and mochas, their collection of cocoa and coffee beans from different regions of the world. Their pastries, cakes and multicolored macarons are phenomenal as well. Their truffles and bonbons steal the show. All in all, I’ve never had anything at L.A. Burdick’s that didn’t completely wow me. And this is saying quite a lot, considering that I don’t usually have much of a sweet tooth at all.

For the holidays, L.A. Burdick puts on the ole thinking cap and comes up with beautiful seasonal treats that make the perfect gifts. This Easter, for example, they are offering these really cute dark, milk and white chocolates bunnies and eggs, along with a pretty awesome little thing called Burdick’s Rocher Nest, which is a dark chocolate nest covered in almond slivers and filled with chocolate truffles and marzipan eggs, as well as a hand-piped white chocolate bunny. If you love your family at all, get one of these for them.

For Valentine’s Day I received one of their more manly gifts, Burdick’s Chocolate Cigar Box. Their smooth, elegant wooden boxes are custom-made for L.A. Burdick by Siam Woodworks in Thailand, and are perfect for storing jewelry and other little treasures in after gorging yourself on the original contents. My box was layered with soft, dark brown wax paper and, nestled within, four chocolate cigars as well as 6 heart shaped bonbons (three of them dark chocolate and three with milk chocolate). The cigars were heavily flavored with rum but not alcohol tasting at all, and were wrapped in layers of milk and deep, deep dark chocolate. The exterior of the cigars were coated with bitter cocoa powder, which added even more to the intensity of its chocolatiness. The darker heart shaped bonbons were made of very dark ganache and rum-soaked raisins, while the milk chocolate hearts were made with a lighter, nuttier cashew-almond butter ganache. They were absolutely delicious and disappeared pretty quickly.

L.A. Burdick never ceases to amaze. I already suspect that a thick, bittersweet hot chocolate, on a cold winter day, with a bit of whipped cream and some nutty, delicious bonbons to go along with each sip will be one of the hardest things to replace when I leave Boston.