Chocolate-Covered Cherries

Every Christmas, I give my dad a box of cordial cherries. They're a favorite in his family, probably because his mother used to make them from scratch when he was a kid. I wasn't old enough to try my grandmother's cherries before she passed away, but I do remember my grandfather and my great-grandmother always keeping the boxes of Queen Anne's cherries around when we would visit them during the holidays; I'm not sure if we always ate the store-bought ones, or if that was a tradition that started after my grandmother died, but they're a tradition in our family nevertheless, a treat that literally drips with nostalgia for those Christmases past.

When I was a kid, taking my time, painstakingly sipping the sugary liquid out of a small bite in my cordial cherry, I would wonder what magical powers my grandmother must have had to be able to make these. How does one go about making something with a liquid center? Made confident by my previous candy-making endeavor, I decided to do some research and attempt making my own chocolate-covered cherries. Without my grandmother's recipe, I went to Allrecipes for instructions, and found they are really not all that difficult to make, though they do take some patience.

Baked Alaska

Happy New Year! My friends and I rang in the new year in style, with a potluck-style dinner for which I was happily assigned dessert duty. I don't normally have the opportunity to cook one big thing for a group so I racked my brain for the most extravagant thing I have wanted to make that I could think of; it wasn't hard to decide I wanted to get ambitious and make Baked Alaska.

I'm not going to pretend I was the first to have the idea to make Baked Alaska; it's an old-fashioned dessert I first heard about from a college roommate, and then it reappeared on my radar this year as one of the "festive finales" in the Martha Stewart Holiday Sweets magazine I've been studying this season for inspiration (the online version of her instructions is here). If you don't know what Baked Alaska is (and I had to explain it to my fellow dinner party guests enough times to tell you you're definitely not alone!), it's an ice cream cake molded in the shape of an igloo, covered in meringue.

Oma's Pecan Tarts

Pecans are a Southern treat; pop-up stores and mall shopping carts are peddling them all over my hometown during the holidays, and my family is known to ship candied, chocolate-covered, chocolate-and-toffee-covered, and butter-roasted gift sets of them to each other for Christmas, birthdays, and other occasions (a gift card just doesn't remind one of home in quite the same way!).

Every year my grandmother (who we have always lovingly called "Oma") collects and shells her own pecans in the late summer and freezes them for the winter months, so that we can always have her special pecan tarts for the holidays. Tiny pecan pies, they're little bites of a Southern classic (though you may decide you'd like two bites, or four...). Oma makes plates of these to exchange with her friends but keeps plenty around for us to have all we can eat, too. This year she let my sister Olivia and I help her make them. She also gave me her recipe so that I can continue the tradition by making my own, and I am happy to share it in this post, for anyone else who might like to try a taste of my family's holiday treats.

Holiday treats made by friends in SC

I hope everyone had a great holiday! I did, and in spite of all the rush I was able to spend some time in the kitchen as well. I'm back in Brooklyn now and excited to blog about what I made very soon. I don't have much time at this very moment to write a lot of details (I'm in the midst of planning a New Year's Eve dessert project and almost late for yoga class!), but I did want to take a minute to share some photos of a couple of my favorite holiday creations other people made that I got to enjoy when I was at home.

Chocolate-Dipped Mint Wafers

I'm going home today, so last night I decided to make some cookies to bring home (and procrastinate about packing!): Chocolate-Dipped Mint Wafers (or Girl Scout "Thin Mints").

Chocolate-Champagne Truffles

Working at a design studio, I've seen some beautiful holiday confections circulating the office for the past couple of weeks (supplied by both clients and crafty coworkers alike), and I've been waiting and hoping for things to calm down so that I would have my own chance to get in the kitchen and bake something pretty for my coworkers too (because when the rare opportunity to make small personal food gifts arises, one must take advantage of it!). This weekend I had my chance: my friends went out of town and I got up early to finish my holiday errands before the afternoon shopping rush, leaving one whole day to myself to cook up whatever confection I pleased. Not to mention we had a big beautiful snowfall on Saturday night to make staying in the next day feel even more romantic and cozy.

My first thought was to make some kind of rolled-and-cut-out cookie like I did in my previous entry, since I had so much success with the sugar cookies. However, two of my coworkers eat gluten-free and I wanted to make something we could all enjoy, so I decided to make chocolate truffles instead. Two kinds: champagne truffles rolled in powdered sugar, and Grand Marnier truffles dipped in dark chocolate and garnished with candied orange peel.

Jam-Filled Cream Cheese Cookies and Citrus Sugar Cookies

For the past few years I've lived away from my home in South Carolina, going home for the holidays has usually involved a considerable amount of time spent in airports. I get ridiculous travel anxiety: with all the steps it takes for me to get from my house in Brooklyn to the airline gate (subway, airtrain, security), and the fact that I travel so infrequently that I can never remember the exact amount of time it takes for me to travel from Point A to Point B, I'm one who's prone to grossly overcompensate on the time it takes for me to get there, and then I end up with lots of extra time to kill in airport newsstands. I guess it's better than being unprepared, but I always end up buying magazines to help me pass the time.

This year, while browsing the racks, my recent fixation with baking drove me to buy Martha Stewart's Everyday Food (December 2009 issue). Personal sentiments about Martha aside, it was my first time reading this magazine and I fell in love with it-- the photography is delicious and the entire magazine is only seasonal recipes, which really got me into the holiday mood. I studied the "Sweet Treats" article all the way home, plotting my Black Friday Shut-In Cookie Fest. I chose two rolled-and-cut-out cookie recipes: Jam-Filled Cream Cheese Cookies and Citrus Sugar Cookies.