A friend who knows me well suggested I should write about birthday chocolate. As a lover of both birthdays and chocolate, I am game.

Image Source: The Cupcake Cowgirls

So, what does one write about birthday chocolate? How deliciously delectable it is? How deliriously happy you might make a birthday celebrant with a simple box of chocolates? You should already know this.

I was interested to see, though, how the chocolate companies handle birthday offerings:

• Godiva, for instance, touts its birthday gifts suggesting: “You’ll never have trouble finding birthday presents again now that you’ve discovered these chocolate birthday gift baskets… you’ll be the rock star for getting the perfect birthday presents.”
• Russell Stover lets you pick the chocolates for your gift box and personalize the packaging by adding text and your own photo (although this isn’t specific to birthdays, but that’s one of the examples).
• Ghirardelli wants you to “celebrate someone special” by choosing the 15 chocolate squares to go in their gold tin with birthday wrapper.
• Laura Secord didn’t market for birthdays, but as a proud Canadian I do have to say I thought the milk chocolate NHL team-themed hockey pucks were pretty cool.

If you want to make your own chocolate goodies for a birthday there are many recipes for a #yummybday.

Hershey’s Perfectly Chocolate Cake is an easy recipe to follow.

Or how about these two-ingredient gluten-free truffles from Minimalist Baker.

Image source: Minimalist Baker

More of a white chocolate fan? Try Sally’s Baking Addiction recipe for Cake Batter White Chocolate Fudge (although white chocolate is fake chocolate…).

Image Source: Sally’s Baking Addiction

I’m personally a fan of Chocolate Mousse, so here’s a simple recipe for that (although I have yet to make one at home that meets my high standards).

Finally, I thought I’d finish this rumination with a few fun facts selected from Slide Fact’s 22 about chocolate. Did you know:

• Ruth Wakefield traded her recipe for Toll House Cookies in exchange for a lifetime supply of chocolate.
• We can overdose on chocolate. A lethal dose is 22 pounds (or about 40 chocolate bars).
• Every second, Americans collectively eat 100 pounds of chocolate — that’s birthdays or not!