Now that the Christmas Cookies are done, I’m focusing on making some other treats for Christmas. Up this time: Holiday Chocolate Peppermint Bark. “Bark” is such a strange term for this type of candy. Then again, so are “brittles”. Historically it comes from chocolate barks looking like yes, the bark of a tree. Peppermint and white chocolate really don’t, but I am going to go with it anyway. And no matter what it is called, it is delicious.
Here’s another simple “stocking Stuffer” like idea, if you are looking to make your own foodie Christmas presents this year: Chocolate-Covered Roasted Cashew + Pretzel Rounds Brittle. Takes less than 15 minutes to prepare, an hour to chill/harden and then voila! A homemade present! You can, of course, use other nuts, but I am definitely partial to cashews here. If you want to make them a little cinnamony, that might be a nice twist too.
Completely out of character for my baking and cooking style, but staying on the Halloween and ghoulish eyeball theme, here we have some absolutely delicious Spicy Hot Honey Almond Buckeyes, all decked out for the holiday. Despite being technicolor and ghoulish, they taste really cool — kicked up almond butter with cayenne and honey. And besides, freaking the kids out by biting into an eyeball has to be fun, no?
Long time followers of my website know that the other thing that I have a tendency to make around Christmas Time (in addition to the mountains of cookies) is candy, chocolates or fudge. Sometimes Caramels, sometimes Fudge, sometimes Truffles. So this year, I went with another couple of types of fudge: Coffee Toffee Crunch Fudge and Cookies+Cream Fudge. It’s a super-simply, absolutely foolproof fudge recipe that turns out great every time. And ready in a very short time frame. Try it!
As it turns out, it wasn’t really red enough (just more cocoa-y), but I did find this recipe for Red Velvet Blossoms that also rolled the cookies in red sugar and I thought they looked neat, so here is one more submission for Chocolate Week. Using Hershey’s Hugs instead of Kisses is also a nice touch to get them to stand out. This is a recipe that I’ll add to the Valantine’s Day list too!