Let me begin by saying this review is not a sponsored post and I was not compensated by any of the companies that fell prey to our taste buds. We bought every last sinful bite and no doubt will regret eating too many sweets after Christmas but that’s a post for another time. This write-up is purely FYI.

I knew, since last Christmas I wanted to get Lake Champlain Chocolates. It’s been years! We got a couple of familiar boxes of chocolates that we always liked to try again.

Holiday Chocolates of Vermont What’s in the box: 4 each Honey Caramel, Green Mountain, Maple Crunch, & Evergreen Mints.

Holiday Chocolate Assortment 30pc What’s in the box: milk, dark, and white assorted chocolates, including 10 truffles. (Click on the link to get full details)

Excited to try Lake Champlain Chocolates after many years, my enthusiasm quickly dwindled to discover the once superior quality has slipped. The truffle centers lacked flavor and too fluffy making them more of a melt away chocolate instead of the consistency usually associated with truffles. The other chocolates as well were weak on flavor. It seems like they are skimping on quantity and quality of ingredients, but still charging premium prices for their product. A common flaw I see that’s practiced by many companies. I do have two good things to say about our LCC experience. The box chocolates are beautiful to receive and the chocolate’s (shells only) is satin elegance on your tongue. We have no plans to order from LCC in the immediate future. Maybe, we’ll try them again in two or three years.

The night we place our LCC order, we also bought from a new-to-us chocolate company in Maine, Dean’s Sweets, who specializes only in truffles. Perfect! We opted to get the 8-piece Maine Mix collection. What’s inside the box: 2 each Maple, Blueberry, Maine Sea Salt Caramel, & Needham.

DS truffles are smaller than most and expensive considering we only got a ¼ pound of chocolates. However, we hoped the taste would make up for the quantity. The quality is good. I wouldn’t say it was exceptional but far better than LCC and of the four flavors we considered the Maine Sea Salt Caramel outstanding. The other truffles failed to meet our taste palette expectations. That being said, will we order from Dean’s Sweets again. Yes, I see another order in our future.

After sampling these chocolates, we decided to order from a very well-known chocolate company,  GODIVA, instead of being molested by Christmas shoppers at the mall. Yeah, me and my personal space issues, right? lol  I’m not gonna lie to you, we placed a sizable order AGAIN. We didn’t discriminate, either. We got dark, milk, and white chocolates ~ truffles and other chocolates. We wanted to try a variety.

Here’s what we wound up with (hey, don’t judge).

Holiday Assorted Truffles 18-piece gift box What’s inside: Cranberry Truffle, Raspberry Linzer Torte Truffle, Gingerbread Truffle, Creme Brulee Truffle, & French Vanilla Truffle. 12.5oz.

27 pc. Dark Chocolate Gift Box ~ Classic What’s in the box: Dark Caramel Embrace, Midnight Swirl, Dark Ganache Bliss, Double Chocolate Raspberry Truffle, 72% Dark Demitasse, and Mochaccino Mousse Dessert Chocolate. 10.6oz.

22 pc. Milk Chocolate Gift Box ~ Classic What’s in the box: Cinnamon Blush, Coffee Feather, Open Oyster, Almond Praline Raindrop, Pecan Caramel Duet, and more. 10.5oz.

24 pc. White Chocolate Gift Box What’s in the box: Raspberry Star, Hazelnut Praliné Raindrop, White Ganache Bliss, Twilight Swirl, Cashew Raspberry Caramel Cluster, Strawberry Truffle and other white chocolate indulgences. 9.75oz.

16 pc. Limited Edition Holiday Gift Box What’s in the box: Mocha Snowflake: Limited edition holiday piece featuring mocha filling in a milk chocolate shell, Mandarin Snowflake: Limited edition holiday piece featuring orange mandarin filling in a white chocolate shell, Dark Medallion in Green Foil: Solid dark chocolate,Milk Medallion in Red Foil: Solid milk chocolate, & White Ganache Bliss: Creamy white chocolate ganache with vanilla in a white chocolate shell. 6.75oz.

What can I say, except Godiva was FANTASTIC like always. Needless to say, Godiva wins hands down easily and you betcha we’ll continue to buy from Godiva!

Pssst… just wanted to throw this out to ya that Godiva has a little promo going on where you can receive a $10 gift certificate for every $50 you spend. This offer expires ends shortly before Christmas and I found out the GCs mailed after Christmas. It’s a nice incentive, especially if you’re planning to buy anyhow.

I have one more mail order candy review up my sleeve. Come back to find out how See’s Candies fairs in the Kennedy Chocolate Taste-Off Challenge.

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Anyhow, the crazy thing is that my HTML coding works when placed inside a blog post or even on a page post, but it won’t work in the side bar. Until now, I have never had this problem. Has Blogger done something different? Have you experienced similar trouble? Please enlighten us by sharing!

Let’s get Monday started, so grab a cup of coffee and settle yourself in to read my responses to a few of my favorite Monday memes on Monday Morning Musings!

My first blog hop takes me to The Good Life . Each week, Stash prompts us to create a list of 10 things and Christine submitted today’s prompt.

Heather & her sidekick, Wayne, hosts MQAM hop. Each week, they post four loaner questions to answer, and then allow a free-for-all fifth question of our choice for readers to respond to in the comments. Sounds fun? Then, be sure to visit Acting Balanced for the fun!

Here’s a little more intel to get to know me better…

1. February 10th is Clean Out Your Computer Day! It is a day to logically review, and delete old files and programs. Will you be taking part? This is a regular state of mind that I try to maintain. After years and years of neglect, I have become more determined to keep unwanted files off my hard drive. All important documents and photos I make sure to archive routinely to an exterior storage. It is safe to say that tomorrow I will be doing something to work toward my goal of keeping my computer clean.

2. February is also National Grapefruit Month – are you a grapefruit lover? Recipes? I like grapefruit. I prefer eating grapefruit in itself simplest form, sliced in half and sprinkle Splenda on each half. I love the Ruby Red grapefruit variety the best. 

3. Are you watching the Olympics? What events hold your interest or are you just ignoring the whole thing? I’m catching clips of the games. My favorite events are ski jumping, figure skating, and the luge.

4. Valentine’s Day is Friday – are you planning to celebrate? The only thing I have planned at the moment is presenting DH with a hand-stamped card and a small box of chocolates. I originally was going to make home-made cinnamon buns, but he said he didn’t want them since he wants to loss some weight. Actually, we both need to drop a few pounds, so this will be a good thing to not make any unnecessary sweets. 

My question is, what is your favorite truffle center in dark, milk, or white chocolate? A favorite easy-to-get truffle that’s sure to satisfy my chocolate craving & nothing tastes better than this an intense 72% cocoa dark chocolate lightly powder sugar dusted shell filled with a SEXsational creamy soft goodies known as Godiva’s Chocolate Lava Cake.  This is sure to make you go Mmm in more ways than one!

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