A lot of people have been asking us, “What makes your handcrafted Belgian chocolate so smooth and creamy?” Well, we’re finally going to let you in on some of our secrets…

The Belgian Chocolate recipe differs from other chocolate in that it contains no vegetable shortening. The absence of vegetable shortening helps create that pure cocoa flavor that Chocomize customers have grown to love in their customizable chocolate bars. Our mouth-watering milk chocolate is made using cocoa paste, sugar, milk, and cocoa butter. To master the recipe like us, you need the perfect proportion of each ingredient, which can take years for chocolatiers.

Dark Belgian chocolate contains a larger percentage of cocoa. Our white chocolate differs from milk and dark by extracting only butter from the cocoa. This removes the bars brown color while still containing that rich chocolate consistency and flair.

Since Chocomize chocolate bars usually ship within 1-3 days, each hand made order avoids sitting on a grocery shelf for weeks waiting to be eaten. The chocolate is preserved and delivered fresh to each customer as soon as possible.

With prices of cocoa, sugar, and other commodities rising, some chocolate companies have gone to great new lengths to assure large annual profits. In an effort to reduce costs, companies are now adding “air” to the recipe. You heard me right, AIR!!! Chocolate makers lower the amount of chocolate in each bar and bulk up the sweet treat with carbon dioxide while adding little to no additional cost.

Chocomize cares more about the quality of our personalized chocolate bars and pleasing our customers. It’s safe to say that we will never pump air into any of our chocolate bars in an attempt to reduce costs!

Thanks to everyone for your ongoing support as we continue to grow.

Our Time was created to bring together young Americans with an important theme, “Alone we are weak, but together we can accomplish anything!” A non-profit organization, Our Time focuses on motivating the country’s youth to stick together and influence change. In an effort to reach out to young entrepreneurs, Our Time has partnered up with Chocomize as a media of support and promotion.

Integrated in Our Time’s campaign, “Buy Young” Chocomize offers a discount off select bars over a weeklong period.“Buy Young” presents discounts on products while supporting young businesses.

Want to voice your opinion about our nation’s health care system? Check out their “Save Money, Stay Healthy” campaign. Our Time also offers a source for the unemployed to search through available openings on their “AfterCollege” page. With so many great channels of information open to everyone, Our Time will be an important foundation for Americans under 30 to turn to in the future.

For more information, feel free to visit Our Time.

As you know by now Chocomize bars make for a delicious snack, are the perfect gift for any occasion, and are also widely popular for wedding favors. In addition to that we have also had the pleasure to work with dozens of great companies that used our bars for corporate gifts. The folks from Google, for example, can't seem to get enough of our bars. Yahoo!, People Magazine, Cheerios, Melitta, and Nordstrom have been a couple of other companies that we have worked with in the past in addition to dozens of lawyers, doctors, real estate agents, and schools that used our custom chocolate bars for promotional gifts.

This time we wanted to introduce you to a really creative promotional campaign we recently conducted with top notch portrait photographer Dave Moser. Dave took the the pictures for the Chocomize feature in the Costco Connection Magazine. As a creative professional he was looking for an out of the box campaign to leave a long lasting impression with his clients.

Here is what we did:

Dave sent out a very creative letter to everyone on his mailing list which contained some information about his work and most importantly a "golden ticket". The golden ticket invited his clients to create their own one of a kind chocolate bar on Chocomize.com.

The coupon codes that we set up for the promotion covered the chocolate and shipping and allowed up to separate Dave's orders from our regular orders. To strengthen the connection between the chocolate gift and Dave Moser photography every bar got one of Dave's signature stamps on it in the form of an edible image. In addition to this logo, each bar had a custom label on the back of the packaging that read:

"Just what THE ADMIRAL ordered! Your own custom-blended chocolate bar. Enjoy something you don't taste every day, from a guy who specializes in images you don't see every day. Thanks for your chocolate-loving guidance and for visiting www.davemoser.com"

It got even better: After having taken a couple of bites from the chocolate bar his clients would discover three sample pictures between the chocolate and the packaging. What a great way to get people interested and actually make them think about what they are seeing!

Needless to say the campaign was a huge success. One of his clients, a major entrepreneurship magazine, called it the best promotional campaign they have seen in 15 years! We are happy to have been a part of this idea and would love to explore similar opportunities in the future. If you think this is exactly what you have been looking for shoot us an email and let us know what you have in mind.

For more information on 'The Admiral', check out Dave Moser Photography.

Does your dad love mouth watering chocolate? If so, we've got two great new favorite bars made specially in mind for Dads everywhere.

• Dark Chocolate with Almonds, Raisins, and Caramel Pieces

• Milk Chocolate with Banana Chips, Butter Toasted Peanuts, and Kit Kat Bars

Both bars feature our, "Happy Father's Day" plaque, but if you'd prefer to make your own, the plaque is still available as a limited time topping in our creation station.

In addition, remember to check out our new Hot Chocolate on a Spoon available in three great flavors, which can be found in the Favorites Page.

From the Chocomize Headquarters, we wish everyone  a Happy and safe Father's Day!

Calling all Chocoholics,

Chocomize Dark Chocolate Bars will now feature 73% cocoa content! Although some might assume this increase will add an extra bitter taste, its safe to say that our new dark chocolate will still keep the same great balance between smooth taste and strong flavor. Wow, I'm salivating just thinking about the new recipe now.

A bar of dark chocolate a day keeps the doctor away?

Not exactly, but cocoa beans do contain flavonoids, which act as antioxidants. Antioxidants protect the body from aging along with decreasing the likelihood of heart disease. Dark chocolate actually contains nearly 8 times the number of antioxidants found in strawberries!  Flavonoids can also help relax blood pressure and reduce bad cholesterol by up to 10%.

With a rich full body blend filled with distinctive flavor, we know you'll enjoy every last minute of our new dark chocolate base.

Love Hot Chocolate? Love Chocomize? Wish the two were together? Well now they are! We’re pleased to announce the arrival of our newest product…Hot Chocolate On a Spoon!

Here at the Chocomize Headquarters, we’ve been working hard to bring you the latest and greatest in chocolate innovation. After many long nights up tasting chocolate (so much chocolate) and experimenting with flavors, we’re proud to bring you our newest addition that we know you’ll love. All you have to do is put your Hot Chocolate On a Spoon in a mug filled with milk, heat the milk and chocolate till hot, stir until the chocolate has completely dissolved, and finally the best part…enjoy the delicious hot chocolate!

Initially, we have 3 flavors to enhance your hot chocolate experience, but you can expect that number to greatly increase as we continue to perform tests here at the factory.

• Milk Chocolate with Creamy Hazelnut

• Dark Chocolate with Nutty Amaretto

• White Chocolate with Vanilla

Look for them on our Favorites Page!

Let us know what you think about our Hot Chocolate On a Spoon. What flavors would you like in your Hot Chocolate?

Remember back in August of last year when Chocomize had broke the $2,000 mark on our charity count? Well now the charity count is close to approaching the $10,000 mark!

As many of you know by now, Chocomize donates 1% of the proceeds from each order to one of our selected charities chosen by you. Our newest charity, A Drink For Tomorrow (ADFT) has already raised over $2,300!

Founded several years ago by Stephanie Weaver, ADFT is a non-profit organization raising awareness of the lack of access to clean water sanitation in impoverished communities around the world. All of the money donated is used to help implement water projects and teach sanitary habits. In 2009, ADFT was able to complete its first project, a dug well in West Bengal, India that now brings 140 people arsenic-free water. Through a significant amount of growth after two years, they were able to fund 5 similar projects in Haiti, Botswana, Lesotho, Sierra Leone, and Guatemala.

We chose ADFT as one of our feature charities because we love supporting fellow local entrepreneurs like Stephanie. We’re excited to work with ADFT and look forward to a great partnership. For more information on A Drink For Tomorrow or any other of the charities Chocomize supports, visit our Charity Conscious page.

Hey Chocomize Chocolate Fans,

Known for having one of the best ranked mini bars in the hotel industry, Trump International Hotel in Chicago is about to get even better with its newest addition…Chocomize custom chocolate bars! Our personalized chocolate bars are now available at the Trump Chicago Hotel. Future guests of the hotel can look forward to four mouth-watering varieties.

• Dark Chocolate with Pineapple, Cranberries, and Coconut Flakes

• Dark Chocolate with 23 Karat Gold Flakes

• Milk Chocolate with Almonds, Gold Flakes, and Dried Cherries

• White Chocolate with Cranberries and Crunchy Almond Croquant

With Chocomize chocolate stocked in each room, Trump Chicago will continue its success providing the finest mini bar. We hope all of Trump Chicago Hotel’s guests have as much fun eating them as we had making them!

Chocomize would like to welcome the newest summer intern to the hardest-working team in customizable candy websites.  I’m a senior at Pace University majoring in Finance, and a veteran chocolate-eater. In my free time, I like playing sports outside, traveling, and eating. On my first day I already tried the milk, dark, and white chocolate bars, but can’t wait to taste all of the 300 million combinations. I’m excited for a great summer with Chocomize and look forward to contributing to Chocomize’s growing success.

It’s that time of the year again. As some of you may remember, last year we held a golden ticket contest in honor of the epic ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’. This year there will be two golden tickets added to random orders., the lucky recipients of these orders will receive a 3 month subscription to our Chocolate of the Month Club. Is there anything better than biting into a hand made Chocomize chocolate bar only to be rewarded with more chocolate? Maybe jumping into our chocolate river, but our diving board is not yet complete.

We will be giving away two tickets in the next two weeks. Order now for your chance to win a 3 month subscription to our Chocolate of the Month Club.

Imagine driving a chocolate Volvo, and we are not talking about the paint job. Earlier this month Toya Green, a member of the Charleston County, South Carolina school board discovered her car was covered in chocolate when she returned to the parking lot after a series of meetings. The driver’s side doors and windows were covered in chocolate syrup.  Local authorities are looking for the sweet-toothed vandals but have yet to come up with any leads. Hopefully suspects can be narrowed based on the fact that we are certain the vandals did not use Chocomize chocolate as no gummy bears or pop rocks were found at the scene of the crime.

Here at Chocomize, customizing ingredients in premium Belgian chocolate bars is what we love to do. We have had a lot of luck and a lot of fun building personalized chocolate bars for our customers, and we hope that it has been just as much fun designing and receiving your bars.

However, we're always looking for ways to improve and expand our business and we were wondering the other day: what other forms could mass chocolate customization take? If people like to have their own tasty combinations of toppings and treats on their candy bars, then what other items in the chocolate world might people like to customize for their own preferences (or for chocolate gifts).

Since we like to keep our collective finger on the pulse of the chocolate industry, we have come up with a few options so far in our brainstorming:

1. Customizable Chocolate Milk: Okay, you're probably thinking, "Chocolate milk is chocolate milk. I can get it at any store. Why would I want to customize it?" Well, there are methods that people use, primarily available in Europe up until now, of melting chocolate into milk from what looks like a chocolate popsicle. The milk is heated and the chocolate melts of the end of the "popsicle" to flavor your (hot) chocolate milk with premium, high-quality chocolate. What we have in mind are things like: white chocolate milk with a slight orange aroma, or dark chocolate with raspberries. The kind of things that are more special than the same old stuff you find in supermarkets.

2. Customizable Chocolate Truffles: We've all (hopefully) tasted the deliciousness of a chocolate truffle. The sweet, succulent taste of the soft chocolate, often with a little something filling it in the middle. Now, imagine you get to choose what is in the middle of your chocolate truffle, what type of chocolate you want (dark, milk, or white), and even the shape of your truffle. There are probably even more things that people would like to specify. Before we think about all the details, though, we just wanted to run these ideas by you to see what you think.

Would you be interested? Do you have any other chocolate items that you would like to see us customize to your choosing one day? Please, let us know in the comments section here or on our Facebook page.

Our ingredients poll has come to an end and we are excited to announce the winners. The top three ingredients are:

- Reese's Pieces

- Rice Crispies

- Caramel Popcorn

We will try to get our hand on these ingredients asap so that the next time you make your own chocolate bar you can choose from even more options.

Here are the detailed results of the poll:

Thanks to everyone who voted. We hope you had a good time and your favorite made the selection. If not, maybe it helps that we will have our next ingredients poll up in a couple of months. In the meantime, you can think about other goodies that you would like to see on your future custom chocolate bars.

A long time has passed since the last time we added new ingredients to the Creation Station. In the last contest, we (or better you!) found such awesome toppings as cookie dough, junior mints, and the ever-popular Kit Kats©. Over the past couple of weeks we have gathered all the new suggestions. Some of them were also suggested the last time but they did not make the top three like black licorice and rice krispies. Other toppings are completely new to us but sound absolutely delicious. And then, there are also some weird ones as always but you'll see.

We are going to try and find the new candidates in two steps. First, we want to make sure that everyone had a fair chance of suggesting their favorite new topping. In addition to the suggestions below, use the comments box to make additional suggestions. We will go though all of them and see which ones we can realistically work with (soft caramel, for example, would be awesome but our tests showed that it would just mess us the entire cellophane bag so we had to decide against it). On Thursday, we will then post the official poll where you actually get to vote on your favorites.

We are excited and can't wait to sample all of the suggestions!

Here are the ones we have so far:

Rice Crispies

S'mores

Blackberries

Diced apples

Fennel

Fruit loops

Taleggio cheese (seriously?)

Rosemary

Black Licorice

Caramel popcorn

Chai powder

Bee pollen granules

The craze over customizable premium chocolate bars has reached many different places since our founding a little while back. We have received letters from the President, have been featured in many media outlets, and have seen our following expand all across the country and internationally.

Now, we even have a rock star to count among the fans of our chocolate bars. Tommy Lee, the drummer for Motley Crue and succesful DJ recently stumbled upon our operation and was moved to share it with his 88,000 followers on Twitter as well as his 99,000 friends on Facebook.

Since our company is a family-friendly one, we'll refrain from posting exactly what he said (rock stars have a tendency to use some colorful language), but we tweeted back to him and ended up sending him a few rocking chocolate bars.

• The Tommy Lee Challenge: Dark Chocolate with Beef Jerky
• Sweet and Salty:Milk Chocolate with Real Bacon and Mini Pretzels
• Potato Chips Reinvented: Milk Chocolate with Potato Chips
• Cookie Bar
• That's Nuts
• The bling bar: Dark Chocolate with 23 Karat Gold Flakes

Mr. Lee has said that he received the chocolate bars and enjoyed them very much (again, in his own special language). We're happy we can count him among our fans, and if you know any other famous rock stars that you think might be in the market for a few tasty custom chocolate bars, be sure to send them our way.

For those of you who have been following the evolution of Chocomize (or who have looked at our press page recently), you'll know that we have been very fortunate in getting exposure in a lot of great outlets.  From The New York Times to The Today Show to Good Morning America and most recently in Good Housekeeping, Chocomize has been mentioned, featured, or discussed in some of the most visible and respected places in the media.

Tomorrow morning, in honor of the upcoming Valentine's Day, the ladies of The View will have Chocomize bars in hand for their crowd and will tell their viewers about the ability to customize premium chocolate bars as a gift for the big day.  Make sure to tune in to ABC tomorrow at 11:00 AM Eastern Time to see it.

Also, don't forget that 12:00 Midnight on February 10th is the deadline for orders to be placed to guarantee delivery in time for Valentine's Day. So head over to our Creation Station and make your own chocolate bar for your Valentine!

It's been well documented that the founding fathers of Chocomize are among the sweetest alumni of Columbia University in New York City, having met and discussed starting a business while classmates in Morningside Heights.  Now, one of the favorite spots around campus among students is carrying two different varieties of Chocomize chocolate bars.

Our popular Smores Bar and seasonal Valentine's Day packaged bars are now on sale at the 110th Street location of West Side Market.  So whether you are a student at Columbia, a regular visitor to the neighborhood, or just find yourself on Broadway uptown with a hunger for some premium chocolate with delicious combinations of toppings, you can easily stop by the market and satisfy your craving.

Check out our favorites page to see our two new Valentine’s Day themed chocolate bars. Our ‘Dark Indulgence’ bar is dark chocolate with 23 karat gold flakes, dried cranberries, Happy Valentine’s Day plaque, crystallized rose petals, and a red chocolate heart. Talk about delicious! Our ‘Tasty Temptation’ bar is milk chocolate with raspberries, crunchy almond croquent, Happy Valentine’s Day plaque, and a romance heart. These two bars were extensively taste tested by the partners at Chocomize (best part about owning a chocolate company) and believe me, they are going to put a smile on anyone who is lucky enough to get them for Valentine’s Day.

Feeling creative? We have also added a bunch of new Valentine’s Day themed ingredients which can be found in our decoration section in the creation station. We have an edible plaque that says “Happy Valentine’s Day’, message hearts, chocolate strawberry hearts, chocolate love tiles, and chocolate romance hearts.

Don’t see something that you want? Send us an e-mail with your suggestion and we’ll try to get it on our website before Valentine’s Day is over!

-Nick

-15% of women send themselves flowers on Valentine’s Day (it’s ok, Eric does the same thing every year, although he claims it’s Kristen Stewart…)

-Around 1 billion Christmas cards are sent every year for Valentine’s Day!

-3% of pet owners will give their pets Valentine’s Day gifts…

-In three days, over 100 million roses will be sold for Valentine’s Day.

-Teachers receive more Valentine’s Day card than anyone else.

-50%  of Valentine’s Day cards are bought in the week leading up to February 14^th, people love to procrastinate!

-There are over 1200 chocolate factors, 21,000 florists, and 30,000 jewelry stores in the United States.

-73% of the people who buy flowers are men (including Eric sending them to himself.)

-California produces 60% of all roses sold in the US, the rest usually come from South America.

-85% of Valentine cards are purchased by woman.

-Valentine’s Day is also celebrated in Canada, Mexico, England, Italy, Australia, and Denmark

Have any other fun facts about Valentine’s Day? Let us know!

-Nick