The Best Chocolate Gifts for a Sweet Little Treat (2026)

I’ve eaten enough chocolate in my lifetime that I feel overqualified to write this guide. And I'm not referring exclusively to boxes of chocolates in the tradition sense nor bars of chocolate. The general category of chocolate gifts extends inclusively to gooey chocolate chip cookies, hot chocolate bombs, and chocolate-covered nut butter-filled dates too. There's something for everyone in your life who would opt for chocolate over vanilla ice cream or the black side of the black and white cookie.

The best chocolate gifts

• The prettiest bars on the table: Spring & Mulberry Embellished Painterly Set
• A holiday classic: The Original Williams Sonoma Peppermint Bark
• For the adventurous palate: Raaka Chocolate Library Gift Box
• For the date-obsessed crowd: Gato Dates Gift Box
• An advent calendar with 24 days of actually good chocolate: Dandelion Chocolate Advent Calendar
• For the one who bakes for everyone else: Guittard Chocolate Lovers Bundle

Here are some of my absolute favorite chocolate gifts, from artist-designed sets of bars to a bundle fit for the best of bakers, for the ultimate Willy Wonkas in your life.

Spring & Mulberry Embellished Painterly Set

Spring & Mulberry chocolate is notoriously good for gifting—the packaging is gorgeous, and the brand uses direct-trade, single-origin cacao and organic dates for sweetness. This gift set, designed in collaboration with Brooklyn illustrator Phthalo Ruth, comes in watercolor plaid boxes that are almost too pretty to open. It’s special-occasion chocolate at its finest.

The Original Williams Sonoma Peppermint Bark

It doesn’t get more classic than this once-a-year classic Williams Sonoma peppermint bark, so much so that the brand claims it’s the original. Each red tin is packed with layers of white and dark chocolate perfumed with peppermint oil and topped with crushed peppermint candies. The only real question: Should you order one, two, or three (yes, three) pounds of it?

Levain Bakery Cookie Box

Levain Bakery’s signature cookies are thick, gooey, and weigh a third of a pound each. The iconic bakery, which started in New York, now has locations across the country. But for those of you without one in your home city, you're in luck because Levain delivers nationwide. All the cookies are baked and shipped the same day, which means you’ll get the bakery experience delivered right to your doorstep. Its signature is the chocolate chip walnut cookie, but I save a special place in my heart for the dark chocolate peanut butter chip. There’s also a vegan and gluten-free option so that nobody is left out of the cookie party.

Beyond Good Microbatch Collection

When you taste Beyond Good chocolate side by side with most conventional brands, you’ll immediately notice how fruity and, well, chocolaty it tastes. The brand sources and then produces chocolate right at the source in Madagascar and Uganda, partnering with Direct Trade farmers. You can taste that commitment to quality in the Microbatch Collection with four bars that boast 70% or 72% cacao. There’s candied ginger for those who want something on the sweeter (and spicier) side and sea salt and nibs for a well-balanced, well-textured option.

Enzo’s Table Chocolate Almond Butter

My loyalty fell strictly in the peanut butter camp until I tried Enzo’s Table’s almond butter and chocolate almond butter. The family-run California-based pantry provisions brand makes almond butter from estate-grown California almonds, and the result is roasty, toasty, and naturally slightly sweet. The chocolate variety takes this already sublime product to the next level with added cocoa powder and just the right amount of confectioners’ sugar. There’s a rich chocolate flavor, but it’s still subtle enough to enjoy any time of day, swooshed on toast, spooned into dates, or eaten straight from the jar.

Raaka Chocolate Library Gift Box

I was already a loyal fan of Raaka’s chocolate—small-batch unroasted chocolate bars that I love for their fruitier-than-usual taste. This gift box contains eight bars, spanning from 58 to 80% cacao, in flavors like banana foster and green tea crunch for the adventurous and pink sea salt or pure cacao, dates, and vanilla for the purists. Plus, this one comes with a 16-page booklet on craft chocolate so you can learn a thing or two while you indulge.

Tony’s Chocolonely

Tony’s Chocolonely bars scream festive year-round: They’re colorful and vibrant. And it doesn’t hurt that the brand has the powerful, important mission to end all exploitation in the cocoa industry. If buying chocolate means supporting a great cause, why not gift chocolate to everyone in your life this holiday season?

Stellar Eats Grain-Free Fudge Brownie Mix

Stellar Eats makes baking mixes that fit almost every dietary restriction, whether gluten-free or plant-based, and they’re also really, really good. One of my go-tos is the brand’s fudge brownie mix, which has only six ingredients (plus oil and water) and is sweetened with coconut sugar. For an amateur baker like me, this mix makes it easy to have a pan of the fudgiest brownies (with chewy edges, of course) on the table in just 30 minutes. And if you’re not looking to feed a crowd, the brand’s instant treat in a cup means the answer to your craving for a single-serving brownie is just 60 seconds away in the microwave.

Dandelion Chocolate Advent Calendar

This one’s for the chocolate lovers who appreciate a little mythology lesson, too. Hailing from San Francisco-based bean-to-bar chocolate maker Dandelion Chocolate, this advent calendar features handcrafted chocolates from 24 acclaimed chocolatiers, all of whom earned their spot through a series of blind tastings. Along with the chocolate (which is packaged in individual ornament boxes you can hang on your tree), you’ll receive an illustrated storybook full of tales adapted from Nordic mythology, a decorative keepsake star, and daily digital content to be enjoyed along with your treats.

Guittard Chocolate Lovers Bundle for Baking

Guittard Chocolate has been in the game for over 150 years, which means it makes a superior product. It’s particularly a favorite of our Test Kitchen team, who love to bake with it. This bundle is for your friend who has a lot of holiday baking ahead of them, with everything from 66% cacao organic baking wafers to cocoa rouge Dutch-process cocoa powder, plus a chocolate tote to carry it all.

Valerie Confections Chanukah Assortment

Valerie Confections got its start making hand-dipped toffees in Los Angeles over 20 years ago, but these days, everything they make is just as irresistible. I especially love their Chanukah Assortment, which comes with menorah truffles, liquid caramels, champagne truffles, and gilded truffles. It’s the perfect thing to bring to a latke party (yes, I attend one every year) or send to a friend across the country to last all eight nights.

Skekoh Confections 21 Piece Collection

This San Francisco–based confectioner makes chocolates that are literal works of art. My colleague Alaina Chou visited Shekoh’s light-filled studio, where she and her team craft these jewel-like bonbons and caramels. “Each one of the jewel-like bonbons I tried from the 21-piece Hemispheres Collection was delicious, but some favorites were the passion fruit, yuzu, and burnt caramel.”

Kosterina Dark Chocolate Balsamic Vinegar

We’ve written about Kosterina’s cold-pressed Greek extra-virgin olive oil and fruit vinegars, but I have a soft spot for its dark chocolate balsamic vinegar. It’s made with dark cocoa concentrate and is a tangy, slightly sweet treat made for pouring over ice cream like chocolate syrup, baked into brownies, or drizzled over a cheeseboard. It’s a great gift for your friend who can’t choose between savory and sweet.

Jacques’ Classic Hot Chocolate Bombs

Jacques Torres understood the assignment of taking the process of making hot chocolate and turning it into a show. Each “bomb” has the brand’s decadent Classic Hot Chocolate Mix in a Belgian dark chocolate shell with mini marshmallows and sprinkles added in. All you have to do to start the party is pour hot milk on top.

Gato Dates Gift Box

Whenever I eat a nut-butter-filled chocolate-covered date (one of my favorite sweet treats), I like to think that I could make it myself. But I could not recreate Gato Dates’s. The Los Angeles–based brand uses organic Medjool dates that are perhaps the fudgiest I’ve ever tasted, 70% organic dark chocolate, organic nut butter and nuts, and sea salt flakes. They’re decadent and indulgent and prioritizing the use of real whole food ingredients in addition to being vegan, gluten-free, and refined-sugar-free. While I usually opt for the pouches, which come in each of Gato’s nut butter flavors (pistachio, almond, cashew, walnut, and now peanut), I dare you to splurge for a gift box for the holidays.

Diaspora Co. Hot Cocoa

Diaspora Co.’s hot cocoa is delightfully rich and lightly sweetened from jaggery, an unrefined sugar with earthy caramel-like notes. It’s not the Swiss Miss hot chocolate (no shade to them, I still crave those mini marshmallows) that you grew up with. Diaspora’s mix is made with its own Anamalai cacao, and the brand suggests adding spices like cinnamon or chili powder (both of which you can buy on its website) to amp up the flavor.

Alice Mushrooms Chocolate Discovery Set

Alice mushroom chocolates are for the friend who tries every single wellness trend but also loves to indulge in a daily (or nightly) chocolate break. The brand harnesses the power of functional mushrooms in the form of organic dark chocolate sweetened with organic sugar. Alice now has four varieties of chocolate bites: “nightcap” for deep sleep (my personal go-to), “brainstorm” for sharp focus, “happy ending” for the bedroom, and “party trick” for social elevation. The tins, which contain 16 squares or doses of each, are also some of the more chic chocolate packaging one could dream up. If you’re looking to optimize your focus by day and sleep by night, opt for the duo, but if you’re one for experimentation, splurge for the discovery set.

Caffè Panna Classics Ice Cream

If anyone in your life lives in New York and loves ice cream, there’s a good chance they’ve visited Caffè Panna, an Italian-inspired neighborhood ice cream shop with daily changing flavors at locations in Gramercy and Greenpoint. For anyone who can’t swing by in person to pick up a pint of Cookies ’n Panna, fortunately they can skip the line (there’s always a line even in the dead of winter) and order the Panna Classics six-pack and have it delivered right to your door.

Unreal Complete Variety Pack

Unreal can do no wrong in my mind. Unreal’s dark chocolate coconut bars got my family through living together during COVID. The brand’s dark chocolate peanut butter cups are superior to any others I’ve tried (sorry, Reese’s). And its milk chocolate gems are like M&M’s but colored with real foods like beet juice and spirulina. This variety pack is the way to go in order to try all the chocolaty delights that Unreal has on offer. Better yet, it’s all gluten-free and soy-free and made with fair-trade ingredients.

More of our holiday gift guides

• 18 Food Advent Calendars to Buy Before They Sell Out
• 15 Food Gifts We’re Giving (and Secretly Hoping to Get) in 2025