Sweeten your holiday celebrations by baking some of these tasty treats
It’s that time of year. Butter and sugar and chocolate and flour come out of the pantry and the holiday baking begins. Cookies and cakes, buche de noel, Chanukah doughnuts, Kwanzaa pies and casseroles.
Holiday traditions are deeply steeped in many families, but there’s always room for new favorites. With that thought in mind, here are four recipes from my kitchen to yours with the hope that they will expand your repertoire and build new traditions.
Chanukah, which began on Dec. 18 and ends on Dec. 26, traditions include serving food fried in oil — specifically potato pancakes (latkes) and doughnuts. These Moroccan doughnuts, dusted in spices or dipped in a saffron-cardamom syrup will add great new flavor to your holiday table. For Christmas, a crunchy biscotti (twice-baked Italian cookie) flavored with tangerine and toasted pecans. The cookie is then dipped into semi-sweet chocolate or served plain. And individual chocolate souffle cakes with a layer of fruit hidden in the middle are surprisingly simple and have a big wow effect. Best of all the mini souffle cakes can be prepared a day ahead and refrigerated or frozen for up to a week. (I’ve given baking times for all those possibilities.)
And finally a sweet potato pie with maple-glazed pecans to celebrate Kwanzaa, which begins Dec. 26 and ends on New Year’s Day.
And it wouldn’t be the holidays in my house with homemade buttercrunch. Every year I make many batches of this sweet, crunchy candy; it’s way easier to make than you might think and makes a great holiday gift.
