Holiday Gift Guide for the Chocolate Lover

Who can deny the utterly heavenly bittersweet sensations that chocolate can give? Whether it's in the hot cup of Spanish chocolate, or in your savory Mexican mole, or in a creamy dessert atop an ice cream cone, we love chocolate in all its forms and varieties. Forget about giving a chocolate bar to your chocophile loved one-they probably get too much of that already. Get creative and explore all the possibilities for a decadent and chocolaty holiday present!

Chocoholics are bound to love, love, love a fondue pot! Nothing beats a dark, satiny smooth fountain of chocolate that's all melted and ready to top some luscious berries and sweet cookies. Bodum offers a sleek, distinctly modern stainless steel fondue set designed by Carsten Jorgensen. It's a beautiful set that can double as a pot for regular cooking and a transparent glass insert that when fitted into the stainless pot, makes for an excellent fondue experience. It comes with a set of six fondue forks and is available exclusively at Crate and Barrel. Look around the household or kitchen sections of any regular department stores and you'll be able to find fondue sets of all tiers, from higher end to lower end one (that are sometimes heated by a candle) , fitted to accommodate your budget. While you're at it, you might as well throw in a pack of good quality fondue chocolate to complete your fondue package.

To kick up the novelty and the fun in any party, try the Chocolate-Opoly Monopoly board game. This set will surely be a hit with any chocoholic, and it's a sure crowd pleaser for parties as well. Everyone knows Monopoly, and this set adds an interesting twist to the game which promises lots and lots of chocolate. Hasbro also released a Milk Chocolate Edition of Monopoly back in 1995 and it's certainly worth the snag if you can get your hands on a set. Here, the playing pieces, hotels and houses are all made of solid milk chocolate which will make for an exciting and delicious treat. Where else can you ever play a game where you get to eat your opponent's houses? Of course, the winner takes home all the booty. The first chocolate edition of Monopoly was released by Neiman Marcus in 1978 and everything was edible-even the board.

Why not give a dessert book that's entirely devoted to chocolate, from cover to cover? My favorites are Marcel Desaulniers' Death by Chocolate series. Take your pick, from Death By Chocolate, Death By Chocolate Cookies or Death By Chocolate Cakes. The title says it all and in his books, you'll find some of the mot devilish, downright evil recipes that take chocolates to confounding heights. If a Marcel dessert doesn't satiate a chocolate craving, then nothing can. Plus, the pictures are so beautiful, you could call them obscenely tempting. Nick Malgieri also has a wonderful book called Chocolate: From Simple Cookies to Extravagant Showstoppers, and Nick is known for his wonderful, intensely chocolaty creations, too. This book chronicles the history of chocolate and shows you the best techniques to make the most of your chocolate, from the most basic ones to the complex. The photography is also a coup and I should warn you that it could turn on one of those chocolate cravings. If you're into French-style desserts, Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme fits the bill perfectly. Known as the Picasso of pastries, this book shows us accurately how to make those perfect macaroons (French-style), fancy and intensely flavorful chocolate cookies and those beautiful cakes that adorn the display windows of the patisseries in Paris. It's a wonderful book put together by the eminent food writer Dorie Greenspan.

What else could up the ante on your shot of alcohol? Chocolate!!! Imagine the warm tingle of a chocolate-infused drink and if you're tempted to know what it's like for real, get a bottle of chocolate liquor. Godiva offers some excellent chocolate liquors that are great just plain, on ice, in cocktail mixes, or when infused into chocolate desserts and ice creams. Their Chocolate Cream Liquor is a decadently creamy treat, and there's also the Original, the White Chocolate and the Cappuccino Liquor, all of which are sure to delight any certified chocophile. Keep in mind, though that you cannot give this to kids below 21.

Instead of the standard coffee bars, you can give the gift of cocoa. Cocoa may come sweetened for flavoring those delectable desserts or unsweetened for intense shots of Spanish chocolate or for cooking sauces and moles. Valrhona is my favorite, and the company consistently turns out top-quality French chocolate that never fails to add more depth and flavorful to any intensely chocolate experience. Their cocoa powder comes in many varieties, each with its own subtle differences in flavor which will depend on personal preference or the dish that you're making. They also come in different doses, with the Cacao Gastronomie being 100% cocoa. Other are milder in flavor, such as the Les Feves Ivoire White Chocolate Cocoa (35% cocoa), the Jivara Milk Chocolate Cocoa (40%). Many Valrhona cocoa varieties are excellent for turning out intensely flavorful desserts, especially when infused with liquor flavors like the Caraibe, Guanaja and the Manjari.

For a classy (and pricey) treat, you can pick out any item from Francois Payard's shop window and watch your loved one go crazy from a chocolate high!

There are so many options when you're looking at chocolate, and picking out the right one is a cinch because you can never go wrong with chocolate. Just remember that there's more to the perfect present than your regular chocolate, but even with that, I doubt that you can ever go wrong.