Author: Nicole

Around Christmas time, I tend to have a surplus of peppermint candy canes lying around. They also last well into the new year because they keep very well (and go on sale after the holidays!). I like this about candy canes because if you’re a fan of peppermint, they make fantastic coffee stirs and it’s nice to have them around to infuse a little flavor into an otherwise plain cup of coffee.

This Double Chocolate Peppermint Mocha – inspired by the various peppermint-infused drinks I’ve had from coffee shops this season – is far from plain, however. It is a rich, creamy hot chocolate made with both dark and white chocolate. Milky white chocolate really adds a creaminess to the drink, while the dark chocolate makes for a very deep chocolate flavor. Truthfully, I rarely measure out any of the ingredients when I’m going to make up a batch of this drink. I just add a bit of white chocolate, a bit of dark chocolate and add more if I feel I need to. I recommend adopting the same strategy so you can make this at a moment’s notice, but use the recipe below as a jumping off point. Don’t forget to use the candy cane as a stirring stick to really infuse that peppermint flavor. It also adds some extra sweetness to the mocha, and most candy canes have a better flavor than simply adding in peppermint extract.

I garnish this with whipped cream and crushed peppermint, but a candy cane alone is a nice touch. A mini candy cane makes a cute garnish as well, especially if you want to double or triple the recipe for a bigger crowd.
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Spices are at their best when they are fresh. I find that this is especially true of nutmeg, a spice that is often called for in baking in only small amounts. Its delicate, peppery flavor begins to dissipate shortly after it has been grated and you won’t get the same result with previously ground nutmeg. Whole nutmegs are easy to find in most grocery and kitchen stores and can keep for years in a cool, dark place, so all you need to have is a grater on hand and you can have fresh nutmeg for a batch of eggnog anytime!You can use a microplane to grate nutmeg, but I really like nutmeg mills for this spice. Nutmeg mills are built to both store whole nutmegs and grind them. They’re usually round and have a handle on top, which turns whole nutmegs against a blade to grind out just as much as you need at a time. A few turns of the handle and you have plenty of fresh, spicy nutmeg for most recipes. I like the fact that mills store the whole nutmegs, so it’s very convenient to just pull my mill out of my cabinet when I need it and I don’t need to look for either a bottle of nutmegs or a microplane – plus, there is nothing to clean after using.

A lemon glaze is one of the most popular ways to finish off a loaf of freshly baked gingerbread. Lemon makes a great contrast to all of the spices in gingerbread. It is bright and cuts right through those dark flavors – and even though the spices themselves are nice, it is much easier to taste them when you have something to compare them to.

Many gingerbreads are baked in a loaf pan or as a single-layer cake, but this one is a layer cake with a billowy lemon frosting to go with it. The cake is moist and spicy, with a fairly complex flavor thanks to a combination of ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, ground black pepper and molasses. There is even a bit of lemon zest in the cake to help it tie in with the frosting. The cake is flavorful, but isn’t too heavy, so you won’t feel weighed down after a big slice of this.

I made a very light frosting to top off this cake. It is a meringue-based frosting made with egg whites, and has a consistency similar to that of marshmallow fluff, but smoother and less sticky. I added a lot – 1 tablespoon – of meyer lemon zest to infuse the lemon flavor into the frosting. Feel free to use regular lemons in place of the Meyer lemons, but expect to have a slightly stronger lemon flavor in the finished frosting. The cake can be prepared a day in advance and stored, well-wrapped, at room temperature. The entire cake can be frosted in advance, but I think that this light frosting is at its very best on the day it is made (even if you make it several hours before serving). A regular buttercream frosting with added lemon zest can be substituted if you want something a little bit faster that still has lemon flavor to it.

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It’s fitting that there is a kids version of the cookbook Sticky, Gooey, Messy, Chewy for kids – because as much as grown-ups like indulgent desserts that fall into one (or all four) of these categories, kids are the ones who really appreciate something a little bit messy. Sticky, Gooey, Messy, Chewy Treats for Kids is a cookbook designed for kids, with recipes that kids will want to eat and make themselves.

The book covers both breakfast and dessert, since they’re the two meals where you’re most likely to find sweet, gooey foods. The recipes included things like Banana Split Pancakes, Chocolate Pudding Cake and Bumblebee Sting Cupcakes. They are divided into three chapters and grouped by topic, breakfast food, holiday food and party/celebration food, though the recipes are easy enough to make on a daily basis. All of the recipes are well-laid out in a traditional cookbook design (unlike some kids books where you have to search a too-colorful page for the list of ingredients!), and the book is spiral-bound to lay flat while you read it. The recipes are made from scratch, so you won’t find things that start with a log of cookie dough, but are well-explained and easy to follow along with.

There are only 30 recipes in the cookbook, but they are varied and that is more than enough for most kids to choose from. It also means that they’re likely to remember the things that they’ve made and want to go back for more. If you needed any more incentive, the photos in the book are outstanding and really make your mouth water.

There are just a few days left to submit your holiday cupcake photos to the Holiday Cupcake Contest Flickr pool and enter for a chance to win a great baking gift basket! Baking pans, chocolate and other goodies are going into two prize packages for one Grand Prize winner and one Runner-Up!

If you haven’t posted your entry for the contest, you still have time. Simply take a photo of a holiday cupcake – one you made or one that you saw/ate/bought somewhere else – and upload it to the Flickr photo pool. Entries are due by December 23rd at midnight to maximize your chances of encountering a great holiday cupcake. Check out the current entries for some baking inspiration, and try one of these cupcake recipes if you want to bake your own:

• Maple Cupcakes with Maple Buttercream
• Candy Cane Cupcakes
• Gingersnap Cupcakes
• Chocolate Orange Cupcakes

It’s hard to beat a good butter cookie. It’s also hard to find one that is just the right combination of crispness, tenderness and a good buttery flavor. Bakeries – even otherwise good ones – are filled with bland “butter cookies” topped with a variety of colorful sprinkles to lure you into giving them a chance. I stick to making my own butter cookies these days, especially since I found a recipe that makes the best butter cookies I’ve ever had.

The recipe is from Pam Anderson, a food writer who is a former editor of Cook’s Illustrated, whose work is regularly published in USA Weekend, and the author of several cookbooks. Her all purpose butter cookies are simple, delicious and very versatile, so hers has been my go-to recipe since I first clipped it out of the paper years ago. The dough is very easy to put together and makes a great batch of slice-and-bake cookies that you can decorate with sprinkles or nuts. There is no leavening in this dough and the cookies will spread slightly, but hold their shape well, during baking. This means that the dough also works well as dough for spritz cookies, which are made by putting cookie dough through a cookie press (common around Christmas) and pressing it into different designs.

The dough can be made a few days in advance and stored in the refrigerator or freezer. The dough is sticky when it is warm, so you need a well-floured surface to work on. That said, this is a good feature because it means that you can work with the dough quite a bit (if you want to try making cutout cookies, for instance) without the dough toughening up. I usually stick with the slice-n-bake cookies, rolling the edges of the cookie logs in sprinkles or nuts before slicing them into individual cookies on the cookie sheet. The cookies above have been rolled in sprinkles and in shredded coconut.

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Megan, from Not Martha, is excellent when it comes to devising unusual holiday goodies. This year, her take on a traditional gingerbread house is no exception. She baked up some mini gingerbread houses that fit on the rim of a mug of hot chocolate (or coffee). Although I’ve seen gingerbread competitions with houses almost big enough to live in, these mini houses are just as impressive – and a whole lot cuter!

Megan has pdfs of the patterns she used available if you want to try your hand at making some yourself. It takes a little bit of time and precision to put them together, but it is well worth the effort because the effect is amazing. A batch of these, and a few coffee mugs, and you would have one impressive last minute Christmas gift, too!

There is something of a thrill to getting your holiday shopping done at the last minute. There is a rush of adrenaline, wondering if you’ll find the perfect gift as you rush up and down the aisles of different stores, followed by a huge sigh of relief and sense of accomplishment when you pick up the prize you’ve been searching for.

Last minute gifts can and should be be easy gifts. While the thrill of the hunt is fun, there is a risk that you won’t end up with what you want. If you have a few solid last minute ideas in the back of your mind, you can breeze through the last of you holiday shopping knowing that you’re set if you don’t find that limited edition whatchmacalit.

For bakers and cooks, or those who are reasonably likely to spend some time in the kitchen, a cookbook is a great and easy to find gift idea. The Baking Bites Cookbook (which I would recommend with priority shipping from here on out!) is a great one, as are others I’ve mentioned before. A food-related book, like an Anthony Bourdain book or a Ruth Reichel memoir, is a bit better than a cookbook for someone who would rather eat than work in the kitchen. Julie & Julia on DVD should be easy to find in stores, as well.

Pair any of these gifts with some spatulas, measuring cups, whisks or other common kitchen tools. Cookie cutters, a set of cake decorating tips and a pack of muffin cups are great for a baker. An inexpensive pairing knife, potato peeler or even a jar opener can work well for someone who leans more towards baking than cooking.

One other last minute idea I always recommend is a gift certificate for a cooking class. These are often available at specialty food stores, like Sur La Table or Williams-Sonoma, and are well-worth the investment to have some professional coaching on making some great dishes.

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Fruitcake isn’t for everyone, even if you like all the individual components that go into a batch of the dense, spicy holiday cake. It’s heavy and filling – something that you don’t want after a big holiday meal. My solution to the problem is a batch of fruitcake friands. These are definitely not your typical fruit cakes. While they do have dried fruit and a bit of brandy in them, they are soft and tender, with a warm nutty flavor to them. They’re also bite-sized, baked in mini muffin tins, so they aren’t heavy and you can simply pop one or two into your mouth to get a taste of something sweet after even the biggest meal.

Friands are similar to financiers, small cakes made with quite a bit of ground almonds for flavor and texture. Ground almonds, as well as some flour, make up the moist, rich base of these cakes. They usually have some form of fruit in them, and the fruit nut combination makes the ideal starting point for a riff on fruitcake. I left out the spices that you might find in a more traditional fruitcake so that you could easily taste the nuttiness of the almonds in the finished friands. You can also taste the brandied fruits very well this way.

To infuse brandy into the dried cherries, cranberries and raisins, combine the dried fruits in a microwave-safe bowl with brandy. Microwave on high for about a minute, then let the mixture sit as it comes to room temperature. The dried fruits soak up the brandy and become plump and even more flavorful. Cranberry juice or apple juice could be used as a non-alcoholic substitute. For a traditional touch, splash the cakes with a bit of extra brandy as they come out of the oven to really emphasize the brandy flavor and give them some of that extra moistness (from brandy or other liquor) that is typical of other fruitcakes.

Who knows – these might just become a new holiday staple in some households. And I mean that they’ll become a staple on the dessert tray, not that they’ll replace a heavy, old fashioned fruitcake as a keepsake (or a doorstop).

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As the holidays approach, there are inevitably some jokes about heavy, hard, inedible fruitcakes that get passed around as gifts. Some people, I would bet, have never had a fruitcake – and no small part of that is due to the cake’s bad reputation. So, what is fruitcake? And is it really as bad as it is made out to be?

Fruitcake is a dense, spicy cake that is made with dried fruits, candied fruits and nuts. Most fruitcakes have more fruits in them than batter to hold them together, hence their reputation for being heavy and not as light or fluffy as some cakes. The fruit – and indeed the cake itself – is traditionally soaked in brandy or some kind of other liquor. This does add flavor, but the liquor has a preservative effect on the cake, as well. A well-soaked and carefully wrapped cake can last for months, and the flavors in the cake will meld together and deepen over that time. A cake that will last this long is not necessarily a requirement for most of today’s cake bakers, but fruitcakes have been around for centuries and the ability to preserve the cake was extremely important long before refrigeration.

If you have a fruitcake, and you can buy good ones from many retailers (the one above is from Harry & David), serve it in small slices. The spicy flavors and the sweet fruits actually make for a great combination, and while a bad one makes a good doorstop, a good one can still be a part of the holiday celebrations.

Recipes for cranberry breads and cakes often call for the use of fresh cranberries. Cookies and bar cookies, by contrast, usually call for dried cranberries instead. They’re easy to incorporate and have a nice sweet-tart taste. Dried cranberries mix into batters and doughs just as easily as nuts and chocolate chips do because they don’t add any additional moisture to a recipe. Fresh cranberries can have their advantages, however, and shouldn’t always be overlooked as cookie dough add-ins. They are more tart and have a clearer cranberry flavor than their dried counterparts.

This is precisely why I opted to use fresh cranberries in these Cranberry Almond Squares. The squares are moist and soft, with a base made with just enough ground almonds to give them a rich, nutty flavor. Without the berries, the bars would be very plain. With the berries, they are colorful and have a great balance of sweet and tart in every bite. I added some sliced almonds to the tops of the bars to give them a little contrasting crunch.

It’s great to have a sweet-tart dessert to serve alongside richer, sweeter desserts that tend to appear during the holidays. Cranberries are fresh and easily available during the late fall and early winter, as well. Although I’ve called for fresh cranberries in the recipe, you can substitute frozen berries easily to make this year-round. The recipe also doubles well and can be baked in a 9×13-inch pan. Or, you can simply do what I did, and bake three batches in a row to satisfy hungry taste-testers!

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I have to admit that sprinkles are still one of my favorite ways to decorate sugar cookies and butter cookies, but there are so many other ways to decorate them that I can’t just stick to the same old sprinkles every time I bake. Frostings and glazes are great to work with. It is even more fun to paint cookies.

Cookie paint can be made with egg yolks and food coloring. Simply mix the two together to create the color you want and brush it on to an unbaked cookie. The egg yolk glaze bakes up to be incredibly shiny and vibrantly colored in the oven. The only downside – and I only say this because some butter cookies are not terribly sweet to begin with – is that unlike sprinkles, the egg yolk paint isn’t sweet and doesn’t add any kind of flavor to the cookie. That said, it’s a plus if your cookies don’t need any extra sugar on top!

In the Christmas spirit, I make a rainbow of colors and painted this batch of Soft Cutout Christmas Cookies to look like ornaments. A round cookie cutter was ideal for creating the ornament shapes, and the colors were so bright that I could keep the designs simple. I put these on display near the Christmas Tree as we ate them.

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The Orange and Clove Snowballs I made recently were cookies that featured the flavors of both orange and clove, chosen because I often made orange pomander balls around the holidays as a child (and still do!) and I really associate the season with the warm, spicy scent combination. As good as the cookies are, I still couldn’t resist making some real pomanders to set around the house and spread their Christmasy aroma.

Pomanders are very easy to make. All you need are some fresh, ripe oranges and a jar of whole cloves. Simply insert the pointy ends of the cloves into the rind of the orange in any pattern that pleases you. If you have a knitting needle, you can stick a piece of ribbon just underneath the skin, then tie a loop so you can hang the pomander, on a tree or elsewhere. This is a great project to do with kids. It’s fun, smells great and there is no cleanup because the clove-studded oranges can sit out just about indefinitely because they dry-cure with the cloves in them.

Eggnog is one of those foods that really conjures up thoughts of the holidays because it’s only available for a few weeks of the year (although you can make it at home anytime). There are also lots of eggnog-flavored treats out there, like cakes and cookies. Many don’t even use eggnog as an ingredient and just include vanilla and nutmeg in the recipes to capture a big of flavor that is reminiscent of eggnog. This is a huge disappointment when you want something that actually tastes like eggnog! It’s also unfortunate because eggnog can be a great ingredient to use when baking around the holidays. In many recipes (cakes, puddings, etc.) regular eggnog can be substituted for regular milk, adding a lot of holiday flavor to an otherwise unseasonal recipe.

Eggnog plays a big part in this Eggnog Ricotta Cheesecake, so you get a cheesecake that is a balanced mix of cream cheese and eggnog flavors. Ricotta cheese has such a mild flavor that it doesn’t come to the forefront, but it does have a big impact on the texture of the cheesecake. The cheesecake is light and very tender, not heavy or dense.

I used a shortbread crust for this cheesecake. Its plain, buttery flavor goes well with the cheesecake and it is very sturdy, so it slices and holds together very well. It is also very easy to throw together. The cheesecake batter is poured over the crust while it is still warm, so the whole cheesecake takes very little time to come together. I refrigerate this cheesecake before serving. It can be served warm or at room temperature, but you may want to bake it the night before and simply put it in the fridge for 8-12 hours before serving.
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When it comes to Santa Claus and food, I’m not alone when I say that I only thought of him eating cookies, milk, hot chocolate and the occasional candy cane. This little idea has been perpetuated in holiday movies, like The Santa Clause, as well. But according to Santa’s North Pole Cookbook: Classic Christmas Recipes from Saint Nicholas Himself there are many more recipes, all traditional Christmas recipes from around the world, in Santa’s repertoire.

The cookbook starts off with breakfast and covers breads, appetizers, side dishes, main dishes, drinks and desserts. The origin country of each of the recipes is listed right in the table of contents, with some festive selections attributed to “The North Pole,” such as the Candy Cane Creme Brulee. When you turn to the main page for each of the other recipes, you’ll see a story about the origin of the recipe and the culture it comes from, as well as a discussion of why certain ingredients are used and what makes it a traditional Christmas dish. The recipes are simple and straightforward, and each is accompanied by a tip or two that should help you make them easily.

The cookbook is a great holiday piece, whether it’s for a gift of you just want it to keep around the house. The recipes can be made year round, but it is obviously a great place to look for holiday inspiration and simply to read some stories of other Christmas traditions.

There are just two weeks left until Christmas, which means that if you want to order a copy of The Baking Bites Cookbook in time for holiday gift-giving, now is the time to do it! If you order in the next couple of days, a book with standard shipping (free for US purchases of $16.95!!) will definitely arrive by Christmas. If you wait more than two days to place your order, you will probably want to choose Priority Shipping ($19.95 for the book and 2-3 day shipping) to guarantee that you book will arrive in time to make it under the tree.

You can also still order copies of the book from Amazon, with free super saver shipping.

The bite-sized Dove Promises are one of my favorite types of chocolates to keep around the house for snacking. Each one usually has a fortune cookie-type message inside the wrapper, which I tend to glance at and then cast aside. Imagine my surprise when I found one that read: “Use cookie cutters as tree ornaments. Martha Stewart.” All of the messages inside Dove’s holiday Promises have tips from Martha Stewart herself – all of which I find a lot more useful than the generic messages that you usually find inside these chocolates! A few other food-related tips I found included “Decorate a cake with handmade whipped cream and fruit,” “Turn to a tried-and-true recipe for an important get together” and “Package cookies in a decorative bread pan wrapper with ribbon.” Other tips are more generally about the holidays, not just food.

The two flavors I found these in were the Milk Chocolate with Caramel and the limited edition Dark Chocolate Peppermint Bark. The peppermint bark flavor, by the way, is really delicious. The chocolate is creamy, with a nice snap to it, and the white chocolate layer has big chunks of peppermint in it. It is definitely a step above some peppermint bark I’ve tried, and I like the fact that they come in bite-sized pieces, too.

When I was a little kid, every Christmas I would pick oranges from one of our trees and stud them all over with whole cloves. The resulting pomander ball was incredibly fragrant and it only took a couple to infuse almost the whole house with a very subtle smell of orange and cloves, a scent that I associate with the holidays as much as eggnog, hot cocoa, wood-burning fireplaces and peppermint candy canes.

This year, I took that orange and clove concept and put it in cookie form. The resulting cookies don’t last nearly as long as their pomander counterparts – which can last for months in a dry environment – but they just taste as much like Christmas as those clove-studded oranges smell like it.

The cookies are snowballs, shortbread-like round cookies that almost seem to melt in your mouth when you bite into them. The cookies are rolled in confectioners sugar to give them their snowball-like appearance, and to add some sweetness to them, since the cookie dough is only very lightly sweetened to begin with. The crumbly texture comes from ground almonds (almond flour or meal) and some cornstarch, as well as from the relatively high butter-to-flour ratio of these cookies. Orange zest and ground cloves give the cookies their distinctive warm, spicy flavor. These improve with age, so feel free to make them a couple of days ahead of time and store them in an airtight container.

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The Star of David is an easily recognized symbol of Judaism, so what better way to present a dessert at a Hanukkah party than with a cake baked in the shape of that six-pointed star? A silicone Star of David Cupcake Pan bakes six small cakes, each the size of a large cupcake, in the shape of the Star of David. The details of the star are imprinted in the base of the cake and you’ll see the design if you invert the cakes to serve them. Fortunately, the silicone allows you to turn these cakes out very easily and you don’t need to worry about the points sticking to the pan. The pan is also freezer safe and can be used for Jello molds and ice cream/sorbet molds if you don’t want to bake. You can even bake big star-shaped ice cubes and pop them into a bow of punch.A Star of David Bundt Cake Pan can also turn any of your favorite bundt cake recipes into a treat perfect for a Hanukkah potluck. The Nordicware pan has great detail, is made of heavy gauge aluminum and has a nonstick interior, although I would definitely grease and flour the pan to ensure that all the ridges of the star pattern come out cleanly.

Hanukkah starts at sundown tonight. For many of my friends, this means the start of several days of holiday parties, and gatherings of family and friends over good food. Part of the tradition of Hanukkah is eating fried foods, using oil in celebration of an historic miracle where a single day’s worth of oil lasted for eight days and nights. Fried potato pancakes, or latkes, are a staple of the holiday, and donuts are a traditional food as well. I’ve been to Hanukkah parties where a box of Krispy Kremes were set out on the dessert table, but I’ve been to even more where party hosts were looking to balance fried foods with lighter, healthier options.

For lighter fare, Oven-Baked Latkes can still come out crispy, with a fraction of the oil of their pan-fried counterparts. They’re good year round and always a popular choice for health-conscious Hanukkah partygoers. Sugar Donut Muffins are an alternative to deep fried donuts, that still deliver the flavor and texture of a good sugar donut.

On the slightly more fried side, you can go with fried latkes, a batch of fluffy Beignets with powdered sugar or some Pumpkin Spice Donuts to infuse some fall and winter spices into the menu. Chocolate Cranberry Pecan Rugelach are a traditional Jewish pastry, but not one that is necessarily traditional for Hanukkah because they’re not fried. That said, they’re still a very popular holiday cookie and I doubt anyone is going to say no to a batch of them at a holiday party.