Even a Valentine’s Day skeptic will love these chocolates

When I was younger, I was pretty militantly against Valentine’s Day. I saw it as a corporate-sponsored death march to overpriced restaurant dinners with sickly sweet cocktails and the shotgun purchase of simpering note cards and heart-shaped gifts.

I guess I’ve mellowed a little since those days. I mean, even a Hallmark-endorsed expression of love can be a good thing, right? A small reminder of “what the world needs now” and all that.

And besides, I love chocolate.

Chocolate happens to be the perfect Valentine’s Day gift. It’s sweet and it comes in heart-shaped boxes at various price points and in various styles. Not to mention its supposed aphrodisiacal properties.

In this fallow month for retail, buying from a local chocolate maker also is a great way to support a small business. Consider it something like November’s Small Business Saturday, except (this year) it’s on a Friday, and attached to Valentine’s Day, not Thanksgiving.

Whatever your personal feelings about Valentine’s Day, here are a few suggestions of Pittsburgh chocolate makers and their seasonal offerings — to give to your beloved or to yourself.

Lux Artisan Chocolates

Shelby Gibson was a pastry chef before she decided to become a chocolate maker.

“I couldn’t do the hours — I had kids,” she said. “And I noticed there weren’t any modern chocolatiers in Pittsburgh doing bonbons and good bars.”

She has filled the niche with style. Her beautiful truffles are stuffed with ganaches in imaginative flavors ($20-$78 for boxes of 5-29 pieces). For inspiration, she says her pastry chef background helps, and she keeps an eye on recent trends. She has a new Dubai bar-inspired bonbon, for example.

Other new flavors: Meyer lemon-guava, pomegranate-hibiscus-pecan tart and sea buckthorn berry-caramel. Her February offerings also include a customizable bark that you can fashion to your specifications ($14, order on the website only) and peanut butter salt sea hearts ($14-$25).

luxartisanchocolates.com to buy online and for local and national retailers.

Tabbara Artisan Chocolate

Nancy Tabbara, a native of Lebanon, married into a family of Lebanese chocolate makers going back generations. She has a simple, classic line that puts nuts in the forefront — Lebanon is known for the quality of its nuts. But she also sells a more modern, colorful line of chocolates sprayed with white, red, pink or fuchsia cocoa butter.

Assortments ($20-$30) have chocolates that feature inventive flavors and textures. One truffle with a dark chocolate shell is filled with lime gelée, pistachio ganache and pistachio praliné. Or another with a white chocolate-raspberry chocolate shell contains raspberry caramel and a hazelnut praliné.

A tablet formed of a whimsical bounty of bright-red hearts is made of dark chocolate with caramelized nuts ($12), a three-chocolate heart lollipop ($5), hazelnut dragées ($15) and a cocoa-hazelnut spread ($12) also would make great gifts.

tabbarachocolates.com to buy online and for local retailers.

SpectroDolce

SpectroDolce is a candymaker with a mission. It provides a safe place for people with autism to gain work skills. Many (but not all) of the items on sale are made by the SpectroDolce staff, including much of the Valentine’s Day spread.

Items here are more moderately priced than the artisanal chocolate makers in the city, and less rarefied in their appeal. There are Valentine’s Day boxes of chocolate-covered pretzel pieces ($30) or pecan turtles ($33); large-size geometric Breakable Hearts ($20) with an edible chocolate shell filled with goodies inside, marshmallow lollipops ($2) and large “Love”-imprinted chocolate bars ($6).

Though not in a holiday box, I loved the milk chocolate English toffee with sea salt ($11 for eight pieces).

SpectroDolce Confectionery, Monroeville Mall; spectrodolce.com.

Toffee Taboo

Also seen around town at small retailers are chef and event planner Bob Sendall’s Toffee Taboo barks. Packaged in beribboned, festive red boxes, these local darlings are confected of toffee-encrusted almonds and cashews embedded in a dark Belgian chocolate bark, sprinkled with kosher salt and drizzled with white chocolate ($45.50).

store.allingoodtasteproductions.com for local retailers.