Bites from other Blogs

• Scones can be on the decadent side of things for a breakfast option because they are usually loaded with butter and cream. Fresh from the Oven‘s scones omit the butter, however, replacing it with far more decadent bittersweet chocolate in Alice Medrich’s Cream Scones with Chocolate Chunks. You can use chocolate chips in this recipe, but you will get to enjoy the chocolate to its full effect if you buy a bigger block and coarsely chop it up, as the incorporation of all the extra little shards of chocolate will give the scones a lovely speckled look.
• Florentines are very thin cookies, often studded with nuts or dried fruits, made with a lot of sugar that caramelizes during baking and gives the cookies a unique look and flavor. The Milk Chocolate Florentines made by Bake Me More use oatmeal in the cookie base, rather than chopped nuts, and are dipped in melted milk chocolate after baking. The cookies are actually quite easy to make and the finished product tastes like a very fancy, caramelized oatmeal cookie. These are an impressive addition to a holiday cookie plate.
• Shortbread cookies are fairly traditional for holiday baking, and while their buttery flavor is good, they can be a bit on the boring side. Zoe Bakes infused some flavor into her holiday cookies with Maple Brown Butter Shortbread Cookies. Not only do they use flavor-packed maple syrup and browned butter, but it is topped off with a layer of rich coconut before being studded with nuts and dried fruits. Definitely not your average shortbread!
• Fudge is a great treat to bring to a holiday potluck. It takes less time than baking multiple batches of cookies and the finished fudge can be cut into pieces big or small to serve any crowd. Smart Cookie‘s Pumpkin Pie Fudge is a departure from traditional chocolate fudge. It’s easy to make and tastes like a very sweet pumpkin pie – it even includes real pumpkin!
• If you want your holiday cupcakes to stand out on the dessert table – or you want to give yourself a leg up on my Holiday Cupcake Competition – take a look at the adorable snowman decorations that went onto Cherrapeno‘s Winter Cranberry Cupcakes. The snowmen are made out of fondant and are actually quite simple to put together. If you bake with your kids, you can let them roll out the icing and build their own snowmen for the cupcakes, too. It shouldn’t be as cold in the kitchen as it is outdoors, but it wouldn’t hurt to have some hot chocolate on hand even for this snow-free snowman building.

Speaking of the Holiday Cupcake Competition, don’t forget to take a peek at the flickr gallery and see the entries so far!