Inspired by the iconic Oreo, these sandwich cookies combine cocoa powder, peppermint extract, and crushed candy canes for some festive winter flavor. This is a cut-out cookie, and you’ll notice the rolling method is like that used for Soft Sugar Cookies. For the chocolate version, use cocoa powder instead of flour to dust your surface and rolling pin, so that the sticky dough stays dark and workable.
Make sure that you choose pure pumpkin puree, not pumpkin pie filling, which is sweetened and spiced. While there are different versions of pumpkin puree available—many supermarkets have their own brands—if you can, I suggest you buy Libby’s. It is the most consistent, it has a beautiful color and, most important, it’s not watery—it always bakes well.
Starting out, I was always so scared to try out a Yule Log recipe – they always look so intimidating! But I encourage you to give it a go. Even if it ends up looking like a mess, it’ll still taste delicious! I tried something a little different with this Yule Log and added a line of frozen chocolate cremeux. It’s totally optional but it really elevates the dessert and helps you advance your skills.
This recipe is so light, not overly sweet or heavy. It’s a real showstopper for the Christmas table – the ultimate festive dessert.
Okay, now don’t freak out, but there is mayonnaise in this cake. I know: crazy. But it takes the place of the oil in the recipe, as well as the eggs (though, yes, I do throw in one, for good measure). And the texture is so perfect, as well as the flavor, that you need to put any mayo-phobias behind you and get baking. The marshmallow frosting here is epic, but if you’re just not feeling like pulling out your stand mixer for it, I totally understand and suggest you glaze this cutie with Cream Cheese Glaze instead.
This chocolate and hazelnut toffee is one of my favorite treats to gift during the holidays. Crack the toffee into shards and package it in small paper boxes. As with most candy-making, be sure to use a calibrated candy thermometer to cook the sugar to the right temperature—not too soft and not too hard.
You can never have enough chocolate, so we’ve also included an egg-based chocolate ice cream recipe for you.
From the court of the Bentivoglio family in Bologna during the 1600s comes this recipe for hot chocolate. Their cook, Giuseppe Lamma, was responding to the fashion of the day in writing a recipe for processing the cocoa bean along with his own rendition of the drink, chocolate (the candy was still far off). Some historians claim Italians taught the art of chocolate making to the French and English in the 1700s. Another logical explanation is all the Spanish connections with those countries through diplomacy, noble marriages and alliances. After all, it was the Spanish who brought chocolate to Europe from the Americas, and they adopted chocolate drinking with great enthusiasm.
Ingredients
This cake was the first thing I learned to bake with my grandmother. It was, and still is, the best cake I have ever tasted. The Scharffen Berger chocolate we use at the bakery puts a new spin on a nostalgic cake, and a hint of strong coffee adds another flavor dimension. Topped with a decadent buttercream frosting, this cake is everything you want a chocolate cake to be, and a sweet finale for any occasion.
If you can melt chocolate and stir, you can make these cakes, and no commercial mix has chocolate as good as this. Quality chocolate is like breeding: it always shines through. Gooey chocolate pockets stud the cakes, while the cake itself is nearly as dense as fudge.