That's because chocolate is becoming an increasingly hot ingredient for a wide variety of products in the estimated $13 billion market for personal pampering - skin care products, bath products, cosmetics and candles.

Chocolate's reputation for enhancing feelings of well-being, for comfort and for sensuality have hastened its adoption in aromatherapy products.

"Indulging your senses is becoming a key component of the pampering process. It captures the sheer delight of treating yourself to a luscious desert," says Anthony Hebron of Limited Brands, which sells an array of such chocolate-laced products through its Bath & Body Works stores.

Among the sweet treats:

• Sephora. The beauty retailer has a "cookbook" of chocolate for the hair or body. It includes shampoo, conditioner and body wash in white chocolate hazelnut cake and chocolate cream coffee, as well as café au lait "flavors."

•Bath & Body Works. Chocolate Fondue, from the retailer's Tutti Dolci line of fragrant body care and home fragrances, is intended to mimic European sweets with a blend of dark chocolate, toffee and vanilla, with a hazelnut accent. Available are lotion, lip gloss, body wash and candles.

•Origins. Cocoa Therapy beauty and wellness products offer an instant chocolate fix. The aroma, in bath scrub, body butter and a roll-on stick, soothes as it's rubbed over pulse points.

•Rite Aid. The drugstore chain's scented candles shaped like chocolate bonbons are packaged in a gold box with ribbon - much like Godiva chocolates are packaged. The candles complement its Pure Spring shampoo, conditioner and body wash combination in chocolate fudge.

"A lot of consumers are taking to the fact that chocolate is out there to enjoy in other ways," says spokeswoman Jody Cook.