Short Orders for Your Valentine

Dean's Sweets, produced by Portland, Maine , architect turned truffle maker Dean Bingham, offers an unusual selection of handmade bonbons. In raspberry, coffee, ginger, scotch, and rum flavors, each is enrobed in 70 percent dark chocolate ($17 for an 8-piece box; $27 for 16 pieces). To turn up the heat for your valentine, you might want cayenne truffles, which will burn, baby, burn. These hot, chocolat y mouthfuls go from mouth numbing to a warming, mellow heat in seconds. That ought to light your fire. Available at Appleton Bakery Cafe, 123 Appleton St., 617-859-8222, and from Dean's Sweets at deanssweets.com or 207-774-7779. -- LISA ZWIRN

Packaged beautifully -- with names like Pleasure, Forgiveness, Vigor, Renew, Tranquility, Blush, and Sexy -- Newtree Gourmet Belgian Chocolates make thoughtful little gifts -- or a tiny bit of forbidden pleasure for the buyer (3 mini-bars are $2.49). The health ingredients and their benefits are listed on each tiny bar, including guarana extract in Vigor, grape extract in Blush. Sexy is supposed to be energizing, Blush rejuvenating, and Pleasure indulgent. Pick your poison. Available at Savenor's, 92 Kirkland St., Cambridge, and 160 Charles St., 617-576-6328; Beacon Hill Chocolates, 92B Pinckney St., 617-725-1900; and Bella Sante Spa, 38 Newbury St., 617-424-9930 and 76 Bedford St., Lexington, 781-862-2444. -- RACHEL TRAVERS

When she was in high school, Aliya Wali wanted to be a fashion illustrator. Wali became interested in chocolate while working as a dessert chef at her parents' Somerville restaurant, Dali, where she experimented with different chocolate s and flavor combinations. Today, as a chocolatier, she makes truffles and candies and is best known for her line of shoe and handbag-shaped confections. Three months ago, after focusing on Internet sales and running her business from a Somerville factory for three years, Wali opened a Choco-Choco House shop in the South End. Choco-Choco's dark chocolate and champagne truffle, sprinkled with rose petals ($2.25 each) is one of many possibilities for your Valentine. Open until 7 this evening. Choco-Choco House, 83 Pembroke St., 617-718-0946. -- LEIGH BELANGER

Linking chocolate and charity, Lesley Byrne of Lesley's Life Is Sweet chocolates began selling Valentine's Day assortments ($8 to $30) this month at Massachusetts General Hospital's gift shop. Proceeds benefit the MGH Cancer Center. Company founder Byrne always designates a humanitarian or health care group to receive money from her confections. Other beneficiaries are Heifer International and African AIDS orphan projects. The former North Shore resident chose MGH because friends and family have received cancer treatment there. Typical of the exotic flavors in the assortment is Jewel of the Heart, filled with pomegranate juice, strawberry puree, and rose petals. After Valentine's Day, the gift shop will carry Lesley's In the Pink chocolates, painted with a pink ribbon logo, to benefit breast cancer research. Available at MGH General Store and Flower Shop, 55 Fruit St., 617-726-2227 or lesleyslifeissweet.com. -- CLARA SILVERSTEIN

Tear-shaped, foil-wrapped, banner-dangling Hershey's Kisses have been a sweet staple for a century -- except for a period in the 1940s when foil was rationed for the war effort. The company is based in Hershey, Pa., a chocolate-scented town with a theme park and Kiss-shaped street lamps. For many years, Kisses were strictly milk chocolate. In 1990, the company introduced chocolate bonbons with almonds, and later Kisses in dark chocolate, filled with caramel or peanut butter, then Hugs -- minis in white chocolate. The theory goes that the name kiss has to do with the sound or motion the chocolates make as they are squirted onto moving steel belts during the manufacturing process. On Jan. 13, the Postal Service released a Jose Ortega-designed "With Love and Kisses" stamp to celebrate the company's milestone. -- JONATHAN LEVITT