When you stick to a holiday’s “theme” colors - red and green for Christmas, pink and red for Valentine’s Day - it makes it much easier to come up with treats to make in celebration. These Red, White and Blue Chocolate Dipped Strawberries incorporate both the colors of the 4th of July holiday and fresh, in-season strawberries. They look extremely patriotic, as far as strawberries go, and taste like summer.

Just like any other chocolate-dipped strawberries, the method for making these is very easy. There is only one additional step: dip the tips of the strawberries into some blue sprinkles or blue sanding sugar once they have been dipped into the chocolate. Blue sprinkles or jimmies have a bold color to them and look cute on the strawberries, but blue sanding sugar, which I used for the strawberries here, gives the berries a little bit of a sparkle. The color of the sprinkles will not stand out well on milk or dark chocolate, and you won’t get the same visual effect as you do with white chocolate. That said, if you really want to incorporate milk or dark chocolate, just double dip the berries first into the chocolate of your choice, let that layer set up, and continue on with the white chocolate and sprinkles.

Store the berries in the refrigerator until you’re ready to eat them, as white chocolate is a little more heat-sensitive than other chocolates. The berries are best within a day or two of being made.
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The best thing about baking a batch of cookies with macadamia nuts in them, like White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies or Macadamia Oatmeal Lace Cookies, is that you’re left with a bunch of macadamia nuts to use up in other recipes. Macadamia nuts can be kind of pricey, so they’re not necessarily something I keep on hand all the time, but their buttery flavor and crunch go so well with so many dishes, I really enjoy having them around the kitchen to use here and there.

Sometimes I use chopped macadamia nuts as an ice cream topping, standing in for the peanuts often used in a hot fudge sundae, and here I used them to finish off some strawberries I dipped in milk chocolate.

You don’t really need a recipe to make these, especially if you don’t mind having some extra strawberries, chocolate and macadamia nuts around. You can just eyeball it (or look below for some estimates). Melt some chocolate, dip as many berries as you can, then sprinkle the berries with (or dip them into) coarsely chopped nuts. The flavor of the macadamias goes very well with the milk chocolate and really makes the otherwise simple treat into something a little bit more special.

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One of the easiest - and tastiest - candies to make at home is chocolate peanut butter cups. You can use anything from a mini muffin tin to little candy wrappers, which are sold at craft stores, to shape the chocolate. Once the chocolate is set, all you need to do is pipe in a peanut butter filling, cover the open end with more chocolate and you’re all set. The idea is open to all kinds of variations and, much like regular chocolate companies, I decided to treat myself to an Easter edition of this treat!

I used some small plastic Easter eggs (about 2-inches high) as molds for these candies. Since I wanted a relatively sturdy, I used a small spoon to spread melted chocolate around the sides of the eggs, while I might have used a small brush for smaller candies. The shells were chilled, then I piped a peanut butter filling into the middle before sealing them up with more melted chocolate. The finished chocolates came out as half-eggs, but were easily sandwiched together by using a hot knife (butter knife held over the stove) to smooth the flat ends and soften the chocolate, allowing me to stick them together.

I used dark chocolate for these eggs, although milk and/or semisweet will work well, too. I also used natural, salted peanut butter for the centers. If your peanut butter is not salted or is on the sweet side, add a pinch of salt to the filling to balance the flavors. The number of eggs you get depends on the size of your molds, so keep that in mind if you want to create a specific number of chocolate peanut butter eggs.

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One of the easiest sweet treats to make is a rice krispy treat. The basic recipe has only three ingredients - marshmallows, rice krispies (or other puffed rice cereal) and butter - and takes only a couple of minutes to mix together. As a marshmallow fan, I like them plain, but as a fan of easy to make treats, I appreciate how versatile these bars are. You can make them chocolate-flavored or dip them in chocolate, you can use other types of cereal in place of the plain rice cereal, and you can even use the bars as a base for a no-bake candy bar, as I did with this batch.

These rice krispies are topped with a layer of peanut butter and a layer of chocolate, giving them a rich peanut butter cup flavor that is a great contrast for the sweet, crunchy base. The peanut butter (I used a natural pb, but a national brand will work well here, too) layer is very slightly crumbly, much more similar to the interior of a peanut butter cup than to a layer of unadulterated peanut butter. The topping is a chocolate ganache, made with semisweet chocolate and butter.

The only time consuming piece of this snack is that you need to let the layers set up one by one. Even so, you can probably get it done start to finish in an hour - and the hands-on time is probably about 5-10 minutes. They’re a great treat to make with kids and are probably just as likely to be a hit with (adult) coworkers if there are any leftover to be taken into the office.

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Homemade treats are great gifts for the holidays, whether you want to bake cookies or make candies. One of the easiest - and tastiest - treats to make is chocolate bark. Chocolate bark, in its simplest form, is a relatively thin sheet of chocolate studded with nuts, dried fruits or even candies. The sheet of bark is set and then broken into uneven pieces to package and serve.

It’s called “bark” because, when made with milk or dark chocolate, the shards look a bit like tree bark. You can make it with just about any kind of chocolate, though. I really like to use a combination of white chocolate and dark chocolate. The two chocolates can be layered or swirled together to give each bite a bit of each flavor and a good balance overall. I topped this bark off with pistachios and dried cranberries for a holiday look. You can use any kind of nuts or dried fruits you like. Roasted and lightly salted nuts are going to give you the greatest depth of flavor.

To make the bar, all you need is a nonstick surface on which to spread out the chocolate. Parchment and wax paper both work very well, but I generally use my silpat for chocolate work. The melted chocolate can be spread out with a knife or a spatula and should be about 1/8th inch thick. Feel free to make a double batch if you want to make it thicker or want to serve a crowd.

Choose good quality chocolate for this bark, since chocolate is the main ingredient. I used Guittard White Chocolate and Guittard Bittersweet Chocolate for this batch. Make sure that when you choose chocolate - especially with the white chocolate - that you look for something made with real cocoa butter and not vegetable oils.

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One way to take homemade marshmallows to the next level - aside from flavoring them creatively - is to dip them in chocolate, turning the light and fluffy candies into a more substantial snack. There are a couple of potential pitfalls that you can encounter when using chocolate, however, and it might not be best to simply melt some chocolate and dunk in the marshmallow.

Marshmallows have a subtle vanilla flavor and a cloud-like texture. It is very easy for both of these to be overwhelmed by chocolate. Dark chocolate can easily dominate the vanilla flavor or cover it up entirely, depending on whether the marshmallow is completely encased. A thick layer of chocolate virtually guarantees that you won’t be able to taste much marshmallow, and the crunch of a thick shell can really hide the signature texture of the marshmallow, as well.

To avoid these problems, I take two precautions. First, I only dip half of each marshmallow into chocolate. Second, I use a thinner chocolate ganache to dip them in, rather than using straight melted chocolate. The ganache - made with a combination of butter and chocolate - produces a much thinner shell once the marshmallow has been dipped into it, but still sets up nicely. I prefer milk chocolate because the sweetness goes well with the marshmallows. Darker chocolate can sometimes be a little overpowering, especially if you opt for a very dark chocolate with a high cocoa content. That said, chose any chocolate you like and I doubt you’ll be dissatisfied when you have a full batch of these to enjoy with hot chocolate.

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