Foods To Buy Your Valentine That Aren't Chocolate

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Every year when February 14 rolls around, romance pirouettes through the air like love-filled ballet dancers. Valentine's Day is a time when people go the extra mile to show that special someone they care for them more than the world itself. Now, even though any day of the year is a perfect time to display your love, there's something extra noteworthy about this particular day. Just knowing that the general population is also feeling more loving than usual is a great feeling.

But, even though Valentine's Day is filled with sentiment, it can sometimes be a bit stressful trying to find that perfect gift to wow your partner. You certainly don't want it to come across as cheesy, and you want to ensure your boo knows you put thought into it as well. Now, obviously chocolate is a go-to option for so many people, but it can seem so basic. The last thing you want to do is come across as someone who can't find anything unique to give. Luckily, there are a whole bunch of great food options that aren't chocolate but still convey the same great message of love. Here is our selection of awesome food gifts to ensure your Valentine's Day goes off with a bang.

When it comes to getting someone food as a Valentine's Day gift, it's a pretty safe assumption that they'll be expecting something sweet. So, if you present them with a basket of fruit, they might be a bit confused. Sure, fruit is a sweet and healthy option, but Valentine's Day is a holiday that celebrates sugary treats we usually try to avoid by enjoying them with a loved one. But, that doesn't mean you can't buy something shaped like fruit that packs a sweet punch. This is where marzipan comes into the picture.

If you're unfamiliar with marzipan, it's a sweet and nutty-flavored paste made primarily with sugar and ground almonds. It can come in countless forms, such as in a tube shape to slice or in little bite-sized morsels. However, one of the best variations of the candy is the fruit-flavored variety. The marzipan is molded and colored into miniature versions of popular fruit (apples, bananas, oranges, and so on), turning them into a cute treat. So, if you want to give your partner something with the appearance of fruit but has a delightfully rich taste, marzipan is a wonderful option. All that real fruit can wait for another day.

Mixing contrasting flavor profiles is a great way to pack a huge punch of taste. Have you ever had something that was both sweet and savory? Not only do you get the full-bodied richness of whatever sweet ingredient you use, but the savoriness helps cut right through it like a blade to offset a potentially overwhelming experience for your palate. Two flavor profiles that create an awesome seesaw of taste when joined are sweet and salty. And, that's exactly why investing in a bag of handcrafted gourmet sea salt caramel candies from Tara's is a surefire way to put a smile on your loved one's face.

The tub comes with individually wrapped morsels of chewy caramel chunks with crunchy bits of sea salt throughout, so you get a tiny burst of salty crunchiness paired with the rich buttery flavor of the caramel. The vanilla extract used is from Madagascar, which means no shortcuts were taken when trying to concoct the best product possible. The candy is cooked in kettles in the Rocky Mountains, and Tara's is proud of the fact that its recipe has never changed since its earliest days. 

For some reason, the miniature version of an item is way more adorable than the full-size. There's something about the ability to fit it in the palm of your hand that makes it so darn cute. Since there's no better time to do something cute and adorable than on Valentine's Day, you might as well go big with a sweet treat that doesn't only taste delicious but also has the recipient saying, "Aw, how cute!" upon opening it. That's exactly where Baked by Melissa has you covered on all miniature fronts. The company offers a large variety of miniature cupcakes that are colorfully designed, uniquely flavored, and most importantly, delicious.

Baked by Melissa offers a large variety of mix-and-match cupcake box sets, but since it's Valentine's Day, you might as well go with the biggest box available or face the potential wrath of a disappointed loved one. This means purchasing the 50-pack box, and it comes with enough variety to make your head spin (there is even a 100-pack box but your dentist might not approve). It comes with flavors like cookies and cream, peanut butter and jelly, tie-dye, snowcap, mint chocolate chip, red velvet, white chocolate hot cocoa, and vanilla fluff. Pretty epic selection, huh? Make Valentine's Day a huge success with a miniature gift.

If you're a fan of sweet goodies, then chances are you've dabbled in the wondrous world of honey. It's amazing to think our friends in the insect world can produce something so delicious, and they work tirelessly to keep cranking that golden nectar out to keep our palates happy (unbeknownst to them, of course). Honey is a great addition to so many foods and drinks like tea, cheese, yogurt, and ice cream. Heck, you can even just squeeze it straight out of the bottle into your mouth if you so desire. Why not show the sweetest person in your life that you're grateful for their presence by gifting them a jar of Detroit Hives wildflower honey?

Detroit Hives is a company that finds abandoned lots throughout the city and works to turn them into urban bee farms. You may not know just how vital bees are to every aspect of our ecosystem, but Detroit Hives does, and that's why it works so incredibly hard to preserve them in safe habitats. When you purchase a jar of this honey, not only are you getting your Valentine an awesomely unique gift to sweeten their favorite foods, but you're playing a helpful role in the environment, as well. That's a double win.

The last thought you want that special someone in your life to have when they open up their Valentine's Day gift is, "This is cheesy." No one wants cheesy on the most romantic day of the year. Cheesy is for any other time. However, there is room for a cheesy gift on Valentine's Day if you plan on shopping at Murray's Cheese. This is the kind of cheesy that won't sour any mood and will have both of you breaking out the charcuterie board and enjoying a delicious feast to celebrate the romance that's hanging in the air.

Murray's Cheese is an amazing purveyor of fantastic cheeses and meats that will crank up a charcuterie spread from 10 to 11 in an instant. It sells a lot of different variety boxes, but the Greatest Hits pack will have your Valentine singing with delight. You get four great cheeses – English cheddar, mini Brie, cave-aged Gruyère, and young Manchego – along with spiced cherry preserves, sea salt and olive oil crackers, and Marcona almonds. This is a perfect buy for any foodie with a hankering for all things cheesy.

I scream! You scream! We all scream for ice cream! Ice cream is one of those sugary treats that's totally worth yelling about at the top of your lungs. Any hot, muggy summer day is immediately made better once you start spooning ice cream into your mouth. There are new flavors constantly hitting supermarket shelves, and it's virtually impossible not to find at least one variety that your palate will deem delectable. When Valentine's Day comes along, it only makes sense to want to shout your love from the rooftops, so you might as well get a sweet treat that's up to par. That means grabbing yourself a six-pint package of Humphry Slocombe's artisanal ice cream.

The six-pint set comes with half a dozen awesome flavors of ice cream, and that means six different reasons for your Valentine to feel thankful you're in their life. Expect delicious flavors like Secret Breakfast (bourbon ice cream with corn flake cookies), Vietnamese coffee, honey graham (with blackberry honey ice cream), peanut butter fudge ripple, malted milk chocolate, and Matchadoodle (snickerdoodle cookies and matcha ice cream). This isn't your typical supermarket ice cream, and your Valentine isn't your typical person. They're astoundingly special, so get them a gift that also falls into that category too.

Lots of companies nowadays offer cool box sets you can subscribe to and receive new products to tinker around with every month. One company that caters not only to foodies but to anyone who loves meat is Porter Road, and this place is serious about slinging the best cuts of protein you can find. Since 2010, Porter Road has quickly grown in popularity thanks to its high-quality cuts of meat. The person you're buying a Valentine's Day gift for is high quality, wouldn't you agree? So, you should seriously consider signing them up for the Butcher's Choice Box.

The instructions for these boxes are super simple. First, you choose which box you want. Each one has a different selection of meat, and you can switch to another style any time you want. Then, figure out how often you want it to arrive at your doorstep (every two, four, or eight weeks). Finally, select any add-on items you might want to include, and boom! You're all set to receive high-quality cuts of protein you and your Valentine can enjoy for weeks on end.

Not to be confused with the coconut-based cookies known as macaroons, macarons are a colorful French confection made with meringue and almond flour. Each macaron is a tiny sandwich held together with a layer of jam, ganache, or buttercream. They are delicate, sweet without being overwhelmingly sugary, and so beautiful that they would be difficult to eat if they weren't so delicious. Although cookies made from almond flour and meringue have been around for centuries, the colorful sandwiches that populate pâtisserie windows were likely created in the late 19th or early 20th century at the renowned establishment Ladurée of Paris. Luckily, they have become popular worldwide and you no longer have to travel to the City of Light to procure them.

As a Valentine's Day gift, macarons scream sophistication (or, more accurately, purr it seductively with a French accent). They are that rarest of items — a gift that is both unique compared to the usual heart-shaped chocolates and boxes of truffles, and hopelessly romantic. They might be harder to find than Valentine's Day candy, but it will be worth the extra legwork. Plus, you can always buy them online. Unlike most cookies, macarons are almost exclusively sold as gifts and often come in luxurious, elegant packaging so you don't have to worry about wrapping them yourself.

Valentine's Day is, above all, a shamelessly sappy holiday dedicated to love, so why not embrace it? Having one day of the year reserved for celebrating your relationship will never go out of style, no matter how hard the curmudgeons try to convince us otherwise. With this in mind, heart-shaped cookies are practically a necessity. Whether they're plain, decorated with sprinkles, or covered in intricately piped icing, they signal romance without being overly serious about it. If you haven't quite gotten to the stage in your relationship of big, romantic gestures or "I love yous," heart-shaped cookies are a great way to playfully show you care and aren't afraid to express it.

Another benefit of this gift is that you can find the cookies everywhere in the period leading up to the holiday. The bakery at your favorite grocery store is likely to stock some variation of them, and you can even purchase beautifully packaged ones online and have them delivered directly to your door. You can opt for simple designs or choose ones that are extravagantly decorated. Whatever you want to signal to your partner this year, there's a heart-shaped sugar cookie to do it.

The two pillars of Valentine's Day gifting are flowers and sweets, and it turns out that combining them into a single gift can end up being surprisingly original and more affordable than those astronomically priced roses. Our favorite example is a donut bouquet. It's a bold replacement for flowers and wrapped up in all the tissue paper and ribbons that roses might come in, but it also has the benefit of being full of pillowy, sugary treats that are definitely better than a handful of chocolates.

You might be thinking that this gift sounds more expensive than a standard Valentine's bouquet, but if you assemble it yourself, it can actually be much more affordable. All you have to do is head to your favorite donut shop, purchase an assortment of goodies, place them each on the end of a skewer, and arrange them exactly as you would arrange a bouquet of flowers. Take advantage of the DIY aspect of the gift and be strategic about the donuts you choose. You can mimic the appearance of flowers by getting ones with pink, white, and red icing, or go for drama by picking bright colors and different shapes. If you want to go the extra mile, you can make the donuts from scratch. We have recipes for everything from baked pumpkin donuts to easy jelly-filled donuts to donuts made in an air fryer.