Home-Town Favorites for Valentine’s Day

Looking to score extra points on Valentine’s Day? Skip that box of prewrapped chocolates from the drugstore and head to one of these North Shore favorites. You’ll get better quality, more interesting choices, and personalized service—all while supporting your local chocolatier.



Harbor Sweets
If your sweetie likes all things nautical, you cannot go wrong with Sweet Sloops, an addicting confection of toffee, pecans, and white and dark chocolate. There are many other sea-themed chocolates available from the tiny Harbor Sweets factory in Salem, and they can be purchased in almost every North Shore town, including Shubie’s in Marblehead, Henry’s in Beverly, The Partridge Tree Gift Shop in Danvers, Connolly’s Pharmacy in Hamilton, Bruni’s in Ipswich, LuLa’s Pantry in Rockport, and Valentine’s in Newburyport.

85 Leavitt St, Salem
(978) 745-7648
www.harborsweets.com



Pride’s Crossing Confections
This converted train station on Route 127 is the place to go if you need gifts for a variety of tastes. The shop is jam-packed with everything from bags of chocolate covered potato chips and pretzels to cases of fudge, truffles, soft-centers, and white chocolate-covered confections. Don’t miss the famous turtles (seven varieties) and buttercrunches, all hand-made on premises.

590 Hale St, Prides Crossing
(978) 927-2185
www.pridescrossingconfections.com



Stowaway Sweets
It doesn’t get much more charming than this tucked-away shop in a former mansion, where the chocolates are extremely high quality and you can select each piece that goes in the box. Do not, under any circumstances, skip the meltaways.

154 Atlantic Ave, Marblehead
(781) 631-0303
www.stowawaysweets.com



The Cocoa Belt
This elegant shop is a new favorite, both for its selection of delicious truffles in sophisticated flavors like black forest, cappuccino, and champagne and its ability to improve on perennial favorites like peanut butter cups and scotch kisses.

58 Maple St, Danvers
(978) 774-4332
www.thecocoabelt.com



Turtle Alley
Known for its luscious turtles, this local maker also stocks an impressive supply of fruit slices, caramels, and fudge. We are especially fond of the kicked-up versions, including spicy peanut butter cups and almond chipotle turtles.

91a Washington St, Gloucester
(978) 281-4000
Museum Place Mall, Salem
(781) 740-0660
www.turtlealley.com

Sweet and Hot Hits the Spot

A longtime listener of WFNX, my ears perked up a few weeks ago when DJ Julie Kramer and The Sandbox were on air waxing rhapsodic over chocolates from Turtle Alley, a chocolatier with locations in Gloucester and Salem. I looked up the company online, and one glance at their press, which includes kudos from the omnipresent Rachel Ray, made me realize that we at the Dish were apparently the last people on earth to find out about the infamous turtles.

Eager to rectify the situation, we headed over to the Salem store, located in the unfortunate Museum Place Mall, to try the tasty terrapins. The store’s owner, Hallie Baker, handcrafts the chocolates in small batches with the freshest ingredients available and offers an impressive variety of turtles, barks, peanut butter cups, and other confections. We appreciated the fact that the turtles are available made with almonds, cashews, pecans and even macadamia nuts. The chocolate was rich and even, and the caramel was soft and buttery.

Like many chocolate makers today, Baker isn’t afraid to experiment with interesting taste combinations, the results of which piqued our taste buds as well as our interest. While the basic turtles were enjoyable, the real stand-outs were the spicy peanut butter cups and the almond chipotle turtles.

The peanut butter cups start out subtly, and then the mix of smoked paprika, cayenne pepper, chipotle, and a secret blend of spices create a warm, almost autumnal infusion of taste. The heat in the turtles is more straightforward, provided by a layer of chipotles and adobo tucked in between the chocolate and the caramel. When you bite into that, you’ll know it. Nowhere is the spice overwhelming, though—we found the savory combination of sweet and hot balanced and quite pleasing.

If spicy chocolate isn’t your thing, Turtle Alley’s other offerings range from solidly respectable to wonderfully delectable, the fleur de sel caramel and the chocolate-covered coconut being the most memorable. The company’s line of candy fruit slices blow away the supermarket variety—we tasted the new pomegranate flavor, which was juicy and flavorful.  Turtle Alley’s motto is “Life is short. Sin a little” but after tasting some of these confections, a little might not be enough.

Turtle Alley
91a Washington St., Gloucester
(978) 281-4000
Museum Place Mall, Suite 110, Salem
(978) 740-0660
http://www.turtlealley.com/