Lagusta’s Top Ten Confections

  |  October 26, 2016

Lagusta Yearwood of Lagusta’s Lucious, (featured in the Fall Issue of Upstater!) sent along this list of her favorite chocolates. Bet you can’t pick a single favorite…since you’ll want to have all of them. Thanks Lagusta!

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Dick Taylor Craft Chocolates

Dick Taylor chocolates makes awesome bean-to-bar bars I really love, with gorgeous letter-pressed packaging. Such a great company.

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Hazelnut Sugarplum Caramel Bars

Right now we’re gearing up for winter, so we are making lots of our Hazelnut Sugarplum Caramel Bars, with local plums infused with warming spices, hazelnut gianduja, and hazelnut praline.

Pictured: chipotle + caramelized onion caramels

Pepper Caramels

I participated in a project with the Hudson Valley Seed Library and Glynwood to promote a special heirloom pepper called Bridge to Paris pepper, and since we had many pounds of these tasty, super sweet peppers around, I made some caramels with them, and they turned out great! So we froze a lot of pepper puree and will have them most of the winter.

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Potato Chip Bonbon

This summer we made a Potato Chip Bonbon that’s so gorgeous—fresh-fried potato chips made with local potatoes infused into soft ganache and enrobed in dark chocolate. We should really make it year-round. It’s wonderful.

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Taza chocolate

I love Taza Chocolate, they’re a bean-to-bar company specializing in traditional Mexican-style stoneground chocolate. The texture of their bars is so fabulous.

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Thyme, Preserved Lemon, and Sea Salt Caramel

My favorite caramel we make is the Thyme, Preserved Lemon, and Sea Salt Caramel—a little more complex than the Rosemary, but still with a classic caramel flavor profile, with some surprises.

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Rosemary Sea Salt

Our classic caramel, the Rosemary Sea Salt Caramel. Always a bestseller.

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Autumn Bonbon

Right now I’m loving this really beautiful confection we make in the fall, our Autumn Bonbon. It’s sort of like a pumpkin pie filling, made with fresh heirloom pumpkin, rum, chestnut, and maple.

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Fruition Chocolate

I love our upstate pals’ bean-to-bar company, Fruition Chocolate—they make the most elegant, beautiful bars, with gorgeous packaging I had a bean made with wild Bolivian cacao beans of theirs recently that was so tasty, just cocoa beans and sugar in the most lovely package.

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Smoky Corn on the Cob Chocolate Bar

My favorite chocolate of ours is our Smoky Corn on the Cob Bar. It’s so savory and smoky and unlike any other sort of chocolate bar.

A summertime barbecue inspired this bar, and I promise that you’re going to fall in love with it.

It’s a rich and complex bar with organic corn, smoked sea salt, smoked paprika, smoked pepper, and homegrown sage, embedded in a base of 66% dark chocolate. It has miles of deep summery smoky flavor brightened with crunchy freeze-dried corn bits.

There you have it! The top 10. If you haven’t already, visit Lagusta’s online shop or drop in to one of her brick and mortar shops in New Paltz or the East Village!

Do you have a favorite? Let us know in the comments!

About Linda H. Codega

Linda Codega is a graphic designer and writer who loves clean lines, arrows, caps lock and talking about comic books. A Southern transplant, she now works for Luminary Media in Kingston, New York, despite the winters. Send her a message...linda@upstater.com

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