Lilly Handmade Chocolates in Tremont

I really have to thank Twitter for my recent discovery. Many, many months ago I saw chatter on Twitter (and then Foursquare) about Lilly Handmade Chocolates in Tremont. I discovered that owner, Amanda Montague, was on Twitter herself and I quickly added her to my list. And the curiosity began...

From the social media postings, I felt that I had a good sense of what to expect: delicious, homemade chocolates and a good selection of beer and wine to pair with them. This is exactly what we got when we finally found our way there on Friday night. What took me so long?!

The shop instantly put a smile on my face when I saw their playful, pink window display for the holidays. I am sucker for window displays- I've been known to wander down 5th Avenue in NYC for hours staring into the detailed holiday displays. But Lilly's display helped set the mood for our first time shopping there.The next thing that my eye was drawn to was the wall of bottles- beer, wine, and champagne. It was a little overwhelming for a first-time shopper. "R" quickly found his way to the stouts and ended up purchasing several (both old and new favorites). Finding a white wine was a little more difficult (since they don't pair as well with chocolate), but we eventually found a clean, crisp Chardonnay to do the trick. Note that the picture included here is only a portion of the wall- there is more.Now, on to the chocolate...
Shoppers can walk right up to the display and hand-pick their chocolates. There are a few different options, but we settled on the 12 chocolate box for $22 so that we could each select 6. Let me just say that picking 6 was difficult! I was able to easily choose my top 5, but committing to the final 6th chocolate was hard. There were still several of the chocolates that sounded creative and delicious.

But here were my picks:
Pistachio- bittersweet pistachio ganache, milk chocolate
After Midnight- bitter stout, dark chocolate
Cinnabunny- Vietnamese cinnamon, ground ginger, clover honey, dark chocolate
PB Monsters- milk chocolate, all natural peanut butter, clover honey, feuilletine crunch, himalayan pink salt
The Black Diamond- black perigord truffle infused honey, dark chocolate
Sweet Cheeks- burnt salted caramel, dark chocolate

For a full list, and close up (gorgeous) shots of the chocolates, go visit their website. They were all very good, but my favorite two were the Pistachio and After Midnight.

So we walked out of there very happy with our new Tremont find, and I can guarantee that we'll be back. I do have to mention that the prices on the alcohol are a little steeper than you would find for the same bottle at the grocery store, but I'll happily pay a few dollars more to support a local business. Take a look at our loot:We walked away with six stouts, a bottle of wine, 12 chocolates, and a gift bag of four different chocolate bars that will be my holiday present for my boss this week. Quite a nice haul, if I do say so myself. So thanks, Twitter!

Lilly Handmade Chocolates
761 Starkweather Avenue
Cleveland, OH 44113
(216) 771-3333