Switching gears to something sorts of Valentine’s Day like. I think that I say this every year, but I have a love-hate relationship with Valentine’s Day. Ok, it’s mostly a hate-hate because of the absurdity, the consumerism and contrived nature of it all. Love? Well the reason that I might like it a little is that it is an excuse in the middle of the winter to make lots of cookies, chocolates, truffles and the like. And what the heck, you might as well have a theme. So I figured I’d start now, in case anyone wants to use these recipes for their own creations.
chocolate
I’m not very good at making cake. Well, at the actual *baking* of the cake, I am ok, but I am not great at decorating. Much better at cupcakes. 🙂 But, once per year, I do actually make a cake, and seeing the combination of chocolate and coconut is one of my favorites, I decided to make this one here. The Mountain of Malt Balls is to hide my not-so-pretty frosting job.
OK, so these cookies aren’t *really* florentines — those super thin and crispy cookies that are almost like lace, but these are oh so good nevertheless. Sort of a combination of a regular chocolate chip cookie and a florentine. And super coconut-y as well. These may just become one of my standard “go to” cookie as well as they are really fool proof to make.
It’s definitely winter here in New England now, and while Boston was spared the brunt of the Nor’easter that just moved through, Maine got hit with varying amounts from 10-20 inches. I like winter on the whole, so I’m not complaining. When I saw these non-pareil “snow cap” chips at Target the other day, I thought that they would make some nice cookies, even though I think most people are still high from the sugar rush that is / was Christmas. Nevertheless, here we are.
Just wrapping up the Christmas Celebrations in my world and thought I would post a recipe for a spectacularly simple chocolate mousse as our Christmas Day dessert. This really just took 20 minutes to put together and even if you only have an hour to chill it, it is great (better if you can chill it for 4+ hours). For something this simple, it comes off as impressive and is lovely and light.





