Lagusta's Luscious

We still hand-wrap our turtle bars, in gold foil and in a paper wrapper. No plastic except a tiny bit in the glue. They’re irregularly-sized because we make them in small batches with human hands, and no bar wrapping machine is up to the task of packaging a bar that isn’t perfectly standardized. By deciding to stay small and diversify our revenue stream — basically, by shipping a bit less and focusing a bit more on local sales — we don’t have to feel like losers for making things in these artisanal (read: ridiculous) ways. If we tried to get turtle bars in every store in the country we’d have to slim these chonkers down, flow-wrap em and, honestly? Probably not use organic sugar or good choco, to make the margins work. Instead of chatting while origami-folding gold foil around precious bars, we’d have one person presiding over a big loud machine swathing them in plastic in great swoops. Anyway, they’re on the website! That’s the thing. Butterscotch caramel, toasty Arizona pecans, milk chocolate nougat, clothed in a thin layer of dark chocolate, so**ed with sea salt. Vegan!!

Literally ONE person expressed sadness that rosemary sea salt caramels weren’t on the website and I slacked Karen like “we gotta add RSSC back, the people are revolting out here!!” we are too vulnerable to feedback, it’s true, but there they are, on the website.

It’s a little early but I wanted to tell you about our November special chocolates because they might sell out — I just got a tip on some “cool press” coming our way and want to take care of our regulars! Every year we do a Thanksliving box with a donation to our buddies at and this year we prettied up the box and the packaging, with another beautiful custom drawing from . 10% of each sale goes right to Woodstock! And spoiler alert: and I each have a chicken named for us at Woodstock (💅🏼honor of my LIFE💅🏼) and I might be in touch soon with photos of same to further entice you to support the great work the Woodstock crew does.

Anyway, the box has:
3 pumpkin spice caramels
3 rosemary sea salt caramels
3 maple cream leaves
3 apple caramels
3 maple pecan caramels

Our superstar facilities dude and all-around genius Bill decorated the production space for Halloween, Helena and I decorated the café, and man — fall just knocks ya out

Today’s the last day to order for the October ship date — orders for this month start shipping tomorrow! We’ll still have this beautiful caramel and autumn leaves box in November along with some other lovely tricks up our sleeve, so don’t stress if you can’t order today — but any orders placed after today will go out the week of November 18 so they’ll be fresh for your Friendsgiving, harvest feast, Thanksliving, celebration meal after going to volunteer at the animal sanctuary to care for the rescued turkeys, etc etc 🍁🍁🍁

The days are waning to get these seasonal faves like the Bleeding Heart Bonbon with its cherry fondant filling, and the maple cream leaves with fresh maple cream filling. Available by the piece at and and on the website in the Sweet Hauntings Collection, shipping the week of October 14 :)

Ok the next big treat I get to announce to you is this glorious mixed box: the Neapolitan collection. In 9-piece and 15-piece sizes, it’s a mix of chocolate caramels (tootsie roll-esque but a billion times more complex), vanilla caramels (the most unvanilla vanilla) and strawberry balsamic caramels with berries.

took a watercolor I did and made it this washy watery vibey thing and it turned out so perfect.

This is a year-round box for us so once you fall in love with it don’t worry, it’s not leaving anytime soon.

Ok we have some cool new collections rolling out this week. Karen had this idea to make a lot more mixed boxes and it’s such a smart one. One of the collections even has a TURTLE in it. Giving the people what they want!! The new boxes all have beautiful wraparound art designed by with watercolor washes by moi or custom commissioned art by !! Kaitlin has been a pal for forever and we’re so excited to feature her beautiful work.

This sweet hauntings box has a drawing inspired by the beautiful secret cemetery on down the street from us and is a mix of seasonal pieces:

🍎 apple caramel with candied pecan
🌶️spicy apple caramel
🍁maple pecan caramel
🍫chocolate caramel
😋smoked tahini bonbon
🍂fall spice bonbon which is a marbled white and milk chocolate with warming spices
🍒bleeding hearts with cherry fondant
💖spiced pecan fudge
🍁maple cream leaves
💀solid chocolate skulls!!

All of this in one box!!

Peppermint party right off the enrober, just barely set.

When they pop out of the mold perfectly with one little tap!!
The tell-tale sign of well-tempered chocolate.

After years of messing with you guys, we’re sticking FOREVER with our original p b cup formulation. Pinkie promise! The moussey one. I’ve been making it since 2002!!!!! And it’s just the one. We tried to make that kind of crumbly drier texture for a while and without hydrogenated oils it’s NOT IT. Our PB cups are ONLY sugar, good organic , sea salt, and vanilla. Also chocolate. They’re not endlessly shelf stable like the ones with hydrogenated oils and preservatives. They constantly almost break the mixer because it hates the high percentage of all that heavy p b.

We like em. Simplicity.

This summer we switched from making our favorite (since 2011!!) Thyme, Preserved Lemon, and Sea Salt Caramels as an enrobed square caramel to a molded round one — it’s prettier and the caramel is a bit softer than it’s been, slightly more gushy and less chewy. It’s a bit more lemon-forward, also — the tart cuts through the sweetness in a good way. We like it more, let us know what you think! If you want the old-school LL texture, RSSC are your bestie. The first person to comment what RSSC stands for gets nothing but bragging rights🤪🤩🫡😭🤣🍋

Peppermint Parties for a holiday weekend? I’m supposed to be posting about treats for the holiday weekend here, for sure. Frozen PPs are delightful on a hot summer day, but also: it’s Labor Day weekend. For so many that means hanging out by a pool or whatever, but I want to take a minute to offer gratitude to the service / hospitality / health care etc workers who will be working all weekend, on this holiday of gratitude for labor.

Service workers are some of the hardest working humans I’ve ever met, & none more so than our crew, who have giant hearts and care for each other and our customers so wonderfully, who continually inspire me to be a better human trying to run a better and better business. Our production and packaging crew has off for the long weekend but our and crews will be working regular hours all weekend (with me alongside them), doing what we do best: selling things we made with our hands, with care and kindness.

2015 / right this moment

Ok it’s ’s Staff Collection box! Hailey manages with joy and precision, care and wisdom. To say we’re lucky to have her is a huge understatement. And she picked some absolute BANGERS for her box, & chose as her foundation to support so $3 from each box will be donated to them.

Hailey wrote beautiful words about why she chose each piece which I’ll post soon (read them on the website, too!) but here’s the quick line up:

💖 peanut butter cup
💖 bleeding heart (rare!)
💖 rosemary sea salt caramel
💖 milk chocolate heart
💖 strawberry balsamic caramel
💖 pistachio cream bonbon (exclusive!! new!!)
💖 potato chip bonbon (rare!)
💖 maple pecan caramel

FIRSTLY thanks for all the kind words about The Situation re: chocolate prices and also the state of the USPS (who, I regret to inform you, have as of yet not accepted my collaboration request on the aforementioned previous post).

I’m happy to report, however, that our website wizards (Karen and Erin) have been messing with the site and the transition to UPS shipping is looking good. Orders to NYC should arrive in a real, actual 24-hour period and prices should be totes reasonable — let us know if anything seems wonky!

One way to celebrate might be with our Mystery Collections, which are $9 cheaper than a typical box AND you get the fun of not knowing what you’re getting. The production crew has been messing around with tons of one-off & weirdo pieces which we need to clear out before we jump into fall production so, enjoy. This piece pictured is NOT in the box, because I made it in 2017 and have no clue what it was. The mystery of the human memory is a deep one!! But there are plenty of even-prettier ones, TBH.

If you want to know what you’re buying (weird?), our box of the month is Uncle Karen’s Collection for just a few more days and it’s filled with lots of wonderful bites, like the Peach Basil Caramel Heart which we’ll never (?) have again!

Many days are hard running a small business, and many days are so joyful. Today is…not a great one. We got an email today saying that the price of our chocolate will be going up 34% this fall. It’s already gone up over 10% recently, we’re already paying double what we were 2.5 years ago. We all know costs of everything are going up, and we’ve been working on some non-chocolate confections we’ll be slowly rolling out soon. Cacao is a delicate crop, vulnerable to many climate change-related maladies. Everyone I know in this industry is feeling the pinch.

I’m having a hard time even writing the next part of this, but today we also officially broke up with the . Maybe it’s a temporary break up, but my heart is *hurting.* I’ve been shipping chocolate for 20 years, proudly using this public service that exists not to make endless profit but to benefit and assist Americans. When Trump appointed a postmaster seemingly bent on total USPS destruction, I figured that a small vegan chocolate company in a very small town would, you know, single-handedly keep it going. I’ve always been proud to be the largest shipper in this town! But I give up. We’ve had a zoom in pricing and a plummeting in service that we can’t continue to adsorb. More melted chocolate this summer than any other, ever. Endless refunds. Endless emails explaining that no, it wasn’t our decision to send your box from New Paltz to Alabama on the way to New Jersey.

Our website has only UPS options right now — and it’s actually having a little temper tantrum with the transition so if you’ve ordered and your shipping costs were wonky, don’t worry, we’ll make it right. I’ll let you know when it’s smooth sailing again.

Tomorrow will be better. Thanks for coming along for this ride. Sigh. Do you remember when we made this super bizarre chocolate box??

The best day of the year is coming UP! Here’s the run thru for Saturday on Front St:

🎉festivities start at 4 PM
🎉face painting from from 4:30-6:30
🎉bouncy house all day!
🎉lil bit of food from
🎉cake from
🎉drag show hosted by with and .roseofficial (bring cash to tip queens!) at 6
🎉chocolates melting in blazing hot sun! Iced tea and lemonade from !
🎉veggie snacks from
🎉 no banana dolphins…but maybe?!
🎉all free in supreme gratitude to you, finest humans of the LL-verse who keep the lights on and payroll rolling. 💖

We’ll be back to regular chocolatey posting soon but I wanted to share a few photos from a spectacular vegan restaurant I was lucky enough to go to this week. I’ve been vegan for 30+ years and since I jumped into the food world two decades ago my birthday treats, celebratory dinners and travel have revolved around learning through eating. From Alinea and Next and to Eleven Madison Park and , to the endless array of NYC faves, I’ve made it a point to keep up with what’s happening in the vegan scene.

Of course it’s better than it’s ever been but it’s so astonishingly easy to be vegan now by so many magnitudes that my p***y 15-year-old self who got excited when tofu was at the co-op and mail ordered lip gloss from the PETA catalog would kinda plotz in her “meat is murder” soled Chucks.

I thought about her when we got a reservation for a tasting menu at an all-vegan osteria perched in the hills of Tuscany in a tiny medieval town of 16,000 people, .

The food was astonishing, not “good for vegan food in rural Italy,” but good for Manhattan (but so so much less pricy) good for anywhere, vegan or not. The drinks were so crisp and tasted so vividly of their ingredients, there was banana paired with the local celebrated onion variety to be spread on cecina (local chickpea bread) there was cantaloupe purée with charred eggplant, a dessert of licorice mousse creamier than anything I’ve ever had & I couldn’t figure out, was it oat milk or coconut or molecular gastronomy in a siphon or what? Aquafaba! Our newest oldest friend, plus buttery cookie crumbs and passion fruit.

I dunno! I’m just so proud and glad to be in this world where we’re showing people what you can do with less violence in the supply chain. Wild to think we’ve been making confections for 20 years, always trying to make things that aren’t “good for a vegan caramel,” but just: good. Something you remember, made with care.

I’m just happy to be here, so glad you’re all here, too.

Ok I’m heading out for my second almond granita of the day. Xoxoxox
-lagusta

New month, new staff collection! This is the Uncle Karen collection, curated by our operations manager Karen. Her non-profit is of Kingston, so $3 from each box sold will go to them!

Lots of special pieces in this one, like the smoked tahini bar bite, peach basil caramel, and ancho ganache bonbon 😨 Read all about it on our site! 🩷 -Ericka

Staff collection boxes are back!! First up, ✨Avalon 🪩, our beloved long time leader over at ! Her donation is to our local free food fridge , $3 from each box sold will go towards some vegan food to fill the fridge. ♡

This box is SO good, with four exclusive pieces. The Espresso Ganache Bonbon is an incredibly rich ganache filled bonbon garnished with espresso beans. The Blueberry Jam & Sesame Praline is one of my new all time favorite pieces, it’s completely unreal. It has a bouncy layer of blueberry pâte de fruit and a layer of salty, crispy sesame praline. Then there’s the Halva Bonbon, a beautiful dome shaped bonbon filled with sesame halva. And the final exclusive piece is the Peanut Butter Heart, our classic PB filling in a sweet heart shape.

Mainstays featured in this box are our Vanilla Caramel, Thyme Lemon Sea Salt Caramel, Earl Grey Bar Bite, and Strawberry Balsamic Caramel. But, you might not recognize the last one in its new sparkly garnish! -Ericka

See the history of our staff boxes under

JUNE! What a month. When the year really feels new, when the strawberries arrive.

Our strawberry collection is back, and it’s truly never been so beautiful. Bright strawberry white chocolate with hand painted green leaves. Precious dark chocolate shells filled with strawberry almond cream. Our strawberry balsamic caramel in new hues of pink and red, splatted with yellow to emulate strawberry seeds.

As always, we make these bonbons from local strawberries. Tiny and sweet, delivered in their little baskets. It’s all just so precious and sweet!!!! -Ericka

Our annual birthday party is coming up! 13 years of brick-and-mortar life, 21 years of LL as a registered entity with NYS!!! Can you even. Literally we are so old.

Make your plane and hotel reservations, it’s going to be so good. July 13th, 4 PM. A long time ago I read a business book by Ben & Jerry and they said that their business philosophy was that if they could afford to stay in business they could afford to do a Free Cone Day every year. The idea stuck & we’ve done a fun party to thank our community pretty much every year, barring global pandemics or super scary P&L years.

This year we’ll have a beautiful cake from , a parking lot drag show organized by New Paltz’s own (and current Brooklyn luminary) , a bouncy house, tons of chocolate and treats, aaaaand food from , a little taste of the East Village and ’s home in New Paltz.

Wear something fun and preferably ridiculous, bring cash to tip the queens, see you soon! — Lagusta

Got plans this Saturday? You do now! Come to Lagusta's Luscious and meet your new furry soulmate at our adoption event!

WHAT: Dog adoption event
WHERE: Lagusta's Luscious at 25 North Front Street, New Paltz, NY
WHEN: June 1, 2024 at 12:00 PM - 4:00 PM

Don’t miss out on this wonderful opportunity to find a loving companion. See you there!

today’s muse is the earl grey bar! one of our signature bars. she has a layer of bright & balanced preserved orange caramel and a layer of sweet & floral earl grey ganache. the combo is fancy and elevated, transports you to a tea party, inspires photo shoots. flavor notes: orange, citrus, floral, chocolate, herbal. descriptive words: fancy, fun, indulgent. zodiac sign: virgo. 🫶🏻 -ericka