Sweets for the sweet? Maybe that formula worked for you in the past, but this Feb. 14, you might give your valentine something a little more daring. Sweet, yes, but with a dash of spice and a rush of heat. A taste to make your tongue tingle, your cheeks flush and your heart race. In short, to make you feel the same way love does.

High-end chocolatiers and gourmet chefs are creating this sensation by adding a little chile to chocolate.

"We're seeing it more and more, especially with chipotle, which has a very smoky flavor that plays really well with chocolate," says Alexander Morozoff, publisher of Cocoaroma, a new, San Francisco-based magazine for chocolate connoisseurs. "I find it to be really interesting that they are making a connection with the origins of chocolate."

Chocolate, you see, wasn't always the sweet confection it is today. According to historians, the Olmec, ancestors of both the Mayans and the Aztecs, discovered cacao about 2,600 years ago and probably drank it as a savory drink, mixed with herbs and spices. Later, the Aztecs added chile water to the drink.

"The pungent spiciness of the capsacim enhanced and intensified the taste of the chocolate," writes Mark Tafoya, chef-owner of ReMARKable Palate Personal Chef Service in New York City, on his Web site, www.gildedfork.com.

In Mexico, the mixture of chile and chocolate developed into mole, a savory red-brown sauce most often served with chicken. Ingredients vary from cook to cook, but chocolate and some form of chiles are a constant.

Tex-Mex cooks borrowed the idea and added bittersweet or unsweetened chocolate for another layer of flavor in Southwestern-style chili.

In certain parts of Mexico, cooks also use chiles to flavor desserts such as ice cream, says executive chef Ricardo Quintero of Jibarra restaurant in North Raleigh.

Quintero, a native of Mexico, and pastry chef Mariana Olivera generally include a spicy chocolate selection on the Jibarra dessert menu. One was a mole-flavored ice cream. For Valentine's Day, they will introduce a marble cake with ancho chile.

Pairing chocolate with chiles may seem strange, but in the right balance it works. The key lies in how we taste things on our tongue: sweetness on the tip and heat and bitterness farther back.

"The heat and the sugar and the bitterness of the chocolate -- all the flavors keep together in your mouth," Quintero says. "I think it's fun. You are using all the areas of your mouth."

In 1992, chef Michael Welch wowed the judges of a Chocolatier-sponsored contest with his Milk Chocolate Pepper Vodka Tart. In it, he paired milk chocolate with pepper vodka to make a chocolate filling layered on top of roasted red bell peppers on a tart crust.

Welch was working in Phoenix then and was influenced by the sweet heat in chilis there. The combination in a dessert was cutting edge at the time.

"That's why I kind of blew them all away," says Welch, who recently revived the recipe at his current job as chef at the Riverview Plaza in Mobile, Ala. "It took a long time to catch on. Americans are funny sometimes."

An acquired taste

Morozoff, of Cocoaroma, agrees. Until the past decade or so, American adults tended to treat chocolate as "a childish delight," he says. Now U.S. chocolate consumers are more sophisticated, and adults are more open to "weird and crazy different flavors" created by chefs and chocolatiers.

A Southern Season in Chapel Hill began stocking chocolates with chiles about three years ago, says Joyce Fowler, manager of the candy department. She sold it, but at first she wouldn't taste it, she admits.

"I dug in my heels for about a month, but then I couldn't ignore it," Fowler says. "Now that I've tasted some of the really good ones, I really like it. The first part is sweet, then right at the end, you get this little burst of heat."

The current customer favorite is a dark chocolate with various chiles made by Moonstruck in Portland, Ore., Fowler says. Other hot chocolate specialists include Vosges in Chicago, which makes chocolate bars flavored with wasabi, curry powder or peppers; wine and white pepper chocolate bars from Zotter of Austria; and dark chocolate with pink peppercorns from Dolfin in Belgium.

Dolfin just introduced a milk chocolate with masala (in this case, a blend of cardamom, cloves, ginger, cinnamon and black pepper).

This bar is not to be confused with Masala Chocolates of Lomita, Calif., (www.masalachocolates.com) whose signature item, Masala Mania, is a mango mousse filling surrounded by semi-sweet chocolate with a hint of heat.

If you're ready to take the sweet and hot challenge, we've included a few recipes for you to try. If you're not sure how your sweetie might react to chiles and chocolate, Fowler of A Southern Season recommends tucking a single spicy chocolate into a box of traditional chocolates.

It'll be as surprising as love's first kiss -- sweet and a little hot.

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