Holiday desserts come in many different shapes and sizes. There are the traditional pies, decorated and festive cookies, and fruitcakes galore.  But my favorite kind of holiday desserts always include chocolate. This dessert is a fruit-and-chocolate hybrid, which has the best of both worlds -lusciously silky, smooth chocolate filling, and crunchy, tart cranberries.

This tart starts with a sweet pastry dough base, called a pate sucree, which is simple to make and just needs a bit of chilling time before it’s ready to use. The filling is a decadent chocolate/cream/butter combo, that gets poured into a par-baked tart shell, and finished off in the oven.

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Spicy molasses cookies are my holiday favorite. Ginger molasses, gingersnaps, ginger chews, gingerbread – anything that’s loaded with the warm spices of winter is a total home run in my book. So it was only natural that I wanted to feature this outstanding Ginger Molasses Cookie recipe from the Flour Bakery Cookbook. When possible for this blog, we love to do things locally – so the fact that this recipe comes from a local chef makes these cookies even better.

Cookie scoop and Duralex glass bowl from Local Root

While these cookies are served in all of the Flour bakery locations year-round, the feel most fitting for the holiday season. They’re thin but not dry or brittle, and instead are ultra-chewy, with the perfect balance of sweet and spice, and plenty of buttery goodness. They are good enjoyed any which way – warm, cold, or at room temperature, as a morning, mid-day, afternoon or evening snack. Continue Reading

My how the holiday season has flown by this year! Here we are, 6 days until Christmas, and it feels like I pulled my winter jacket out for the first time just days ago. Our recent Holiday Dinner Series almost seems like a distant memory now, even though it only occured a few weeks ago. It was certainly a memorable one, packed with comfort food classics, a beautiful locally-purchased pork roast, and plenty of bubbly and wine. It often happens that I’ll start to plan a menu, and a theme emerges – this time, the theme was cranberry. So fitting for the season!

Parmesan Croutons, ready to dress up the soup bowls

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I think above all others, decorated sugar cookies are the quintessential holiday cookie. Cut into seasonal shapes – gingerbread men, Christmas trees, snowflakes and more – and decked out in bright reds and greens, there is no cookie that better represents this season. I’m generally not a big sugar cookie fan, but around the holidays I can’t get enough of them! They represent a time of year and a season that is very merry and beloved.

The recipe we used for these cookies has a great flavor – super buttery, not too sweet, and crispy but not brittle. If you cook them a bit less, they stay ever so slightly soft in the centers, which is my personal preference. Unlike some sugar cookie recipes, they spread a bit when baking, so they don’t have perfectly defined borders – more soft edges. That’s definitely a feature I love about them! Continue Reading