This past holiday season was not wildly focused on sweets or fun foods, as I might have hoped, given the extra time at home. But that doesn't mean there weren't some goodies to please us while family gathered or friends were on hand. The earliest entry into that suite of treats was peanut butter fudge (pictured above), a pretty simple concoction that's worth breaking out the double-boiler for. It sets up nicely and brings out the peanut butter flavor in earnest measure. I also made a double-batch of pimento cheese (pictured below), using a recipe I came up with after reviewing a number of competitors. I've included a link (at the bottom of this post) to the recipe that was most impactful, if you feel like playing around a bit yourself.
I also made another kind of chocolate pie. You'd have to go all the way back to the winter of 2011 to find the first time I made Emeril Legasse's chocolate cream pie. It is a stunning concoction, not because it's particularly fancy, but because the simple alchemy behind it brings out the most marvelous heavenly slice of chocolatey goodness, almost light in feel but definitely well-massed in endorphin delights. It has made semi-regular appearances here over the last decade and a half, although it's been missing from the dessert rotation for over a year and a half.
Many a time it's been on the dessert menu here, I've shortcutted its prep by using store-bought chocolate crusts...but Nabisco discontinued that product. I don't love chocolate graham cracker crusts but my grocery stores don't seem to carry those either. Isn't it better to make one's own, though? That's definitely the route I took for that chocolate cream pie. It seemed to be well received when I served it on Christmas Eve after we'd had our fill of skillet pizzas.
I might as well throw in for good measure the way I used up the rest of a peasant bread loaf: a fine round of nighttime cinnamon toast. Well-buttered and then thickly sprinkled with cinnamon-sugar, these crunchy sweet delights were much more than I could handle on the evening when temptation compelled that I make them.
Finally, as the holidays were wrapping up, I wanted to send my brother-in-law back on the road with a bagful of white chocolate macadamia nut toffee cookies, given his fondness for them as road snacks. I had to sample a couple myself, as they came out of the oven the night before his Sunday morning departure, and I could attest most assuredly to the latest success with this new-found recipe. Gone so rapidly, and knowing only one possible solution: make another batch. That happened a couple of evenings later:
"15-Minute Peanut Butter Fudge," in the article "Simplifying Fudge" by David Pazmiño. In Cook's Illustrated, January & February 2007, p. 22-23.
"South Carolina-Style Pimento Cheese." Recipe worked out by me, based on Sharon's Palmetto Pimento Cheese. [Published 23 October 2009]
"Emeril's Chocolate Cream Pie," by Emeril Lagasse (2007). Featured on The FoodNetwork.com website.
"Perfect Oreo Cookie Crust," from Sally McKenney of Sally's Baking Addiction. [Published 11 November 2022]
Adapted from "THE BEST White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies," from Christina Marsigliese of ScientificallySweet.com. [Published 19 February 2025 / Updated 11 October 2025]
No comments:
Post a Comment