Every year, right around the holidays, I try my hand at making another variety of chocolate truffles or fudge. Fudge is my old standby though, as I have a great base recipe that I have been using since high school and it is very easy to adapt with some new flavors. This year, I made Winter Spice Fudge, which has a lot of gingerbread and cinnamon flavors and Irish Cream Coffee Fudge, which isn’t very boozy but ended up very yummy. Very easy to make and very foolproof with just a few ingredients.
I know, I know, I *just* mentioned the other day that Halloween isn’t really my thing, and here I am posting the second skull-themed baked good in as many days. Mainly, this is because I wanted to use my skull pan that was given to me, and sure, why not, let’s make something red-velvet-y … I don’t do that nearly enough. The cakes turned out almost too fluffy and very airy, but they did taste good. And there is something satisfying about biting into a skull. Yeah, ok, that last part is a little weird to write. I promise I’m not a vampire.
OK, time to get your creepy on. As I have mentioned most past years, Halloween isn’t really my thing — nor is Valentine’s Day or Arbor Day — but it is an excuse to make some treats, so here we go! This year, it’s these Mexican Chocolate Day of the Dead Sandwich Cookies. I made sort of similar ones last year, but this year, changed out the flavor profile to add cinnamon and some spice to the chocolate, hence the reason I am calling them Mexican chocolate. They actually turned out super yummy and when I had a friend try one today, prefacing it with “it’s sort of like an oreo”, the response was “that is a million times better than just an oreo!” 🙂
My mum has an expression for using random ingredients and/or leftover food for a meal which roughly translates to “sideways through the refrigerator”. Sometimes it feel like that when I throw random things together in my drop cookies. This time: dried cranberries, white chocolate mini-chips, pine nuts, oatmeal, and a healthy dose of cardamom. Delicious combination, even if it is a bit unorthodox!
So, S’Mores. If there is one thing that my non-American friends don’t get (well, besides peanut butter and jelly sandwiches… they don’t really get that either!), it’s s’mores. Yes, we toast (or set on fire) marshmallows, and smoosh the softened marshmallow between graham crackers with part of a Hershey bar. And then try to eat that overload of sweetness without making too much of a mess. Yeah, ok, s’mores are a little odd. Maybe I don’t get them either. 🙂 So I made a new and improved mini-cupcake version for the BBQ Party that I attended last weekend: homemade mini-graham crackers, chocolate mini-cupcakes, from-scratch marshmallow cream and the obligatory piece of a Hershey bar. A “civilized” version of the s’more, if I do say so myself!