From now until Friday, November 27th, you’ve got a shot to win a $25 gift card from See’s Candies. Use it on yourself, or use it to buy someone else a very tasty holiday treat. It also fits quite nicely in a stocking (I should know, my awesome husband puts a card in mine every year!).

(Don’t forget to check out their great Thanksgiving candies, too!)

To Enter:

To enter this giveaway, leave a comment here telling me what your favorite part of the holiday season is. The music? The gifts (both giving and receiving!)? The family and friends coming together? Or how about the food and yummy treats? There is no wrong answer!

….

~ Contest ends Friday, November 27 at 5:00pm PST. One winner will be randomly drawn and notified by email, and will have 24 hours to respond before a new winner is chosen.

~ Giveaway open to U.S. residents only.

~ One winner will receive one $25 See’s gift card.

[images used with permission from See's Candies]

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The three winners of the Dove are:

~ Jess, whose favorite Dove is “The dark chocolate is alright, but the best thing Dove makes? Ice Cream.”
~ Carrie, whose favorite Dove is “I haven’t tried anything but the plain dark chocolate, but I loved it.”
~ Aimee, whose favorite Dove is “My favorite has been the dark chocolate bars, but this may just take over that top spot!”

The winner of the See’s gift card is:

~ Jessica, who says her favorite See’s is the rum nougat (Jessica, you’re definitely not the only one!!)

Congrats to all!

Emails have been sent to all winners as of 10:00am PDT. Winners have 24 hours to respond before a new winner is chosen.

Post from: Chocolate Bytes

As always, See’s Candies has a nice selection of Mother’s Day gifts that any mom would be happy to receive!

Packaged in pretty pastel boxes or a standard classic white box, I can tell you there are few other things I’d rather get from my kids Sunday morning (of course, handmade cards are on that short list!).

For that reason I’ve got a $25 gift card to See’s Candies to give away to one lucky winner!

To Enter:

Leave a comment here telling me what your favorite See’s is — whether it’s a certain piece of chocolate, a chocolate bar, a lollipop, etc, there is no wrong answer!

….

~ Contest ends Thursday, April 30 at 5:00pm PDT. One winner will be randomly drawn and notified by email, and will have 24 hours to respond before a new winner is chosen.

~ Giveaway open to U.S. residents only.

~ One winner will win one $25 See’s gift card.

[image used with permission from See's Candies]

Post from: Chocolate Bytes

Father’s Day is just around the corner and dads love chocolate too! A lot of the companies below offer expedited shipping, so if you’re just now realizing too that Father’s Day is only five days away, don’t panic!

See’s has a lot of great Father’s Day stuff this year. There’s the standard Seegar that’s been around for years, and they now have a Blue Ribbon Box filled with chocolate, a Father’s Day Scrapbook Box, and a Sports Dad Box.

Target has Good Fortune Father’s Day cookies, which are fortune cookies dipped in dark and white chocolate.

Father’s Day Milk Chocolate Bar Gift Box are from World’s Finest Chocolate and are chocolate bars wrapped in “Happy Father’s Day” wrappers and be personalized further for free!

Chocolate.com is offering a Happy Father’s Day Chocolate Chip Cheesecake that looks amazing!

By Nature (UK) has natural and organic chocolates and is featuring a chunky Father’s Day slab.

Phillips Candy has put together a Boston Red Sox Bucket that contains milk chocolate baseballs, freshly baked Phillips Chocolate Chip cookies, “ballpark” popcorn – and peanuts drizzled with chocolate, a Red Sox tumbler, temporary Red Sox tattoos & pencils and an adorable plush baseball.

You can find a bunch of Molded Chocolate Father’s Day gifts from The Chocolate Vault!

VirtualChocolate.com has a ton of chocolate-themed e-cards for dad, too, just in case you can’t get something else to him in time!

[image: see's product photo]

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During a chocolate expedition a couple of weeks ago I came across some Limited Edition Razzberry M&M’s.

Each bag is 1.5 ounces and a bright shade of fuschia. These M&M’s follow the Wildly Cherry size formula and are also about the size of a peanut butter M&M. The color is a typical raspberry used by candy makers – not quite pink but not red either (but at least they’re not an inexplicable blue!).

Now, I love raspberry and chocolate together. When I go to See’s I have to stop myself from getting an entire pound of just raspberry creams. They’re divine.

So while these are “just” M&M’s, I was really looking forward to trying them (and I’m not comparing them to See’s, just disclosing that I love raspberry and chocolate). Sadly, the raspberry/chocolate combo in the M&M’s doesn’t work for me. These have a fakey raspberry flavor that seems to be trying too hard and overpowers the chocolate, which eventually comes through but mostly as an aftertaste.

Have you tried them? What do you think?

Post from: Chocolate Bytes

I got my little hands on some Reese’s Whipps not too long ago. One of my favorite combinations is chocolate and peanut butter, and one of my most favorite candies are Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. I’ve tried other chocolate and peanut butter patties/candies, but nothing compares to Reese’s, who just seems to get the right combination of sweet with a tiny bit of salty in the peanut butter, which makes the whole thing perfect.

So when I saw the Whipps I snatched them up, eager to try them. I was, sadly, disappointed.

The bars weigh in at 1.9oz each. They are a whipped peanut butter nougat concoction coated in chocolate. The texture of the peanut butter nougat reminded me exactly of Three Musketeers, which I’m not terribly fond of. I don’t know why I was expecting this to be different – maybe the thought of a new Reese’s peanut butter and chocolate product blinded me to my own preferences.

Anyway, the peanut butter nougat is wholly underwhelming. My husband said it was too sweet for him, but I thought it was pretty bland and tasteless. The chocolate adds nothing to the bar. The only taste I got was from the nougat and seemingly light peanut butter coating around that, and even those didn’t add much.

Overall, I’m disappointed in this one. I’ll stick to the cups!

[Even though I'm not crazy about these, you can enter to win one for yourself!]

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We went to See’s this past weekend so I pick up Melissa’s prize from last months’ contest (I got impatient waiting for the site to update their shipping method from hot weather shipping, which was an arm and a leg), and finally got my hands on a See’s Premium Extra Dark Chocolate bar while I was there.

And it was delicious! At 62% cacao it was surprisingly not bitter but intense and creamy. I really wish I’d picked up a couple more!

Each bar is $2, or you can get a pack of four from the See’s site for $8.

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Autumn is my absolute favorite time of year and it also signals the start of safe mailing for chocolate, so this month’s prize is:

See’s Candies foil-covered chocolate leaves! Each box includes nine solid milk chocolate and six solid dark chocolate leaf shapes (15 pieces total) wrapped in fall-colored foil.

These little chocolates make me very happy! I have a longtime affinity for See’s — my mom started working there when I was 8, my step-mom worked there for over 20 years, and I worked there seasonally for several years as well (and as soon as the kids are old enough to take care of themselves after school I’ll be going back!). This is the first year I’ve seen these chocolate leaves and I’ll definitely be heading to the mall over the next few weeks to get some of my own!

So here’s the deal: Find me other fall/autumn themed chocolate items — it can be actual chocolate, chocolate recipes, pictures, etc. If you’ve found it online, link to it. If it’s something you own or a recipe you’ve had for years, put it in the comments (or type it up in your own weblog and put the link in the comments here). Just like last month’s contest there are two ways to enter:

Get two submissions to win: Leave a comment here with a link to other fall/autumn themed chocolate items that you have found. Then link to this contest from your own site or weblog and include the URL to the entry with your submission and you now have two chances to win!

OR

Get one submission to win: If you can’t find something chocolaty and autumn themed then just link to this contest from your own site or weblog and comment here with a link to your entry; this is good for one chance to win! (I need to be able to see it though, so make sure it’s not a locked or friends-only entry.)

However, if you have more than one weblog or site that you use to link to the contest, you may submit each one to count as separate entries.

If you live in a hot climate and are afraid these would melt if mailed to you, you can opt to wait for cooler weather and give me the go ahead to order them at that time.

That’s it! If it’s something you actually own then take a picture of it, upload it to a site like Flickr and leave the URL in the comments of this entry. Make sure you leave a valid email address with your submission (it will not be displayed on the site and will not be used for anything else), and a URL if you have one so I can feature everyone at the end of the contest.

The contest will run until September 30 at 11:59pm Pacific. A name will then be drawn from the eligible submissions on October 1 using the super technical method of pieces of paper in a hat, and the winner will be notified by email and announced here on the site.

Once again, this is open only to residents of the US and Canada. If you live elsewhere and can talk someone else into receiving and mailing the chocolate on to you (the second mailing at your cost!), that’s fine, but I don’t count!

Disclaimers

~ The winner will need to provide me with their mailing address to have the chocolate sent to, so if you’re not comfortable with that then please don’t enter (though it will never be used for anything else!).

~ You’re stuck with chocolate leaves — no substitutions or equal value cash-outs.

~ I’m not responsible for melted chocolate (see above). See’s does bounce back well after a bit of time in the fridge, though.

~ You are responsible for any applicable taxes.

~ I am not responsible for shipment problems, shipment re-scheduling, or gastrointestinal distress from eating all the leaves in one sitting.

Good luck!!

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