Catherine’s Chocolates

Catherine’s began as a small chain of New York candy stores early in the 20th century. When the family moved to Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in 1958, Catherine’s Chocolate’s was opened there as a small, hands-on confectionery where every piece is hand-dipped, and each cream-centered chocolate bears a distinguishing mark to let you know what’s inside.

If you have chocoholic leanings, you will find yourself intoxicated the moment you walk into Catherine’s store, where the aroma of freshly-made creams and cordials, truffles and snow caps, brittles and meltaways fills the air. All of Catherine’s hand-dipped candies are pretty darn wonderful, but it’s the chocolate-covered fruits that drive us wild. Glazed orange slices and strips of orange peel, plump hunks of apricot, and maraschino cherries are each coated with thick crusts of milk chocolate or bittersweet chocolate; and on weekends only, gigantic strawberries are given the same luxurious treatment. We happened to stop by Catherine’s a few years ago the week after Valentine’s day, when the chocolatier told us that he had gone through twenty-five flats of berries over the weekend, coating them with milk chocolate, white chocolate, and a “double dip” of both. One of these beauteous berries is a nice little dessert; a half-pound is confectionery ecstasy.

Among the other items available at the store or through Catherine’s mail-order catalog are tiny nonpareils, honeycomb chips, chocolate nut bark (pecans, almonds, cashews, filberts, or walnuts), peanut butter meltaways, pretzels covered with milk, white, or bittersweet chocolate, and whole cakes – either chocolate raspberry liqueur or lemon rum sunshine.