How To Make the Cutest Christmas Baking: Part One

Rabbit rabbit, it's the first of December! This means it's only 24 sleeps until the big guy comes to eat all your cookies and milk. So, you better be prepared. Don't worry-- I've got you covered. Here's Part One of some of my favourite Christmas and holiday baking recipes.

Santa Strawberries

Cute, easy, and questionably healthy, you can't go wrong with Santa Strawberries

Winter Wonderland Meringue Christmas Trees

Gluten free, fat free, but not flavour free -- whip up a batch of these peppermint meringue trees as a gift for those you love! 

Christmas Wreath Donuts

You can't put these on your door, but you can put them on your plate. And into your mouth. 

Holly Jolly Gingerbread Gift Tags

Crispy and chewy gingerbread cookies, AND a practical label for your presents. Does it get any better than this? No.

Christmas Star Sandwich Cookies

Soft, sandwichy, and full of festive baking goodness. A great gift to your tummy.

Haven't quite found what you're looking for? Stay tuned for round two, and sign up for my newsletter for new upcoming recipes!

Smarties Brownies (aka Leftover Candy Brownies)

What do you do when you're sick of eating candy?

Turn it into a new kind of candy and eat more of it.

We're just stepping (lumbering?) out of our post-Halloween sugar haze, and the treat bag pickings are slim. Aeros, Smarties, and those little wrapped rice candies abound. The boyfriend circles our son's candy bag like a chocolate vulture, but we're all kind of over what's left. Desperate times.

This recipe is kind of like chocolate upcycling. First we have the fudgiest brownies, baked in muffin tins and drizzled with a thin black cocoa glaze (you can use regular cocoa--no big deal). Top them with Smarties (kind of like M&Ms to you non-Canadians) but any leftover chocolate will do. Just bake, glaze, and sprinkle your way to a dressed-up treat. 

On Where We're Going and Where We've Been

Oh, hey! Bet you think I've forgotten about you.

I haven't. I've been thinking a lot about this space lately. About why I started it, and where I am now. About what it's done, and what I need. Things just weren't working out the way they used to.

So I've decided to make some changes.

When I started this blog I was still a student, bleary eyed and tired, single parenting a small child while in university and working full time. I was a little bit lonely, a little bit bored, and had discovered something new I wanted to share.

Years later, I was writing cookbooks, creating recipes, snapping photoshoots, working with some amazing people on incredible projects, and all of a sudden I had to stop and think -- how the fuck did I get here? I've always been ambitious. But sometimes that can catapult you in a direction you didn't intend. So I stood back and gave it some thought.

And what did I find? That after 5 years, a few different relationships, a new career, and some budding hobbies, things just weren't the same. Coupled on top of that, a hip injury from a car accident made everything hurt and had me realize where I wanted to spend my time.

So what will be here now? I'm not quite sure! Recipes, pottery, household projects (maybe some drop ins from friends) and a much more rounded approach to everything. 

Let's see where we can take this. 

Triple Chocolate Cake

This cake takes me back.

One of my favourite pre-career jobs was working at a coffee shop in a kind of transitional area of downtown Vancouver. Not quite nice, not quite terrible. Our customers were a mix of vagrants, office workers, people who were just sort of around, and bands in town for shows. I was your typical barista, young and full of ennui, and rattled off customer's orders while counting down the hours to post-work drinks or my resentment of the skytrain ride home to the 'burbs. Youth.

Coffee shops here are painfully and pleasantly common, but our chain crafted uniquely fantastic hot chocolates, made with real chocolate blended into steamed milk. They came in three flavours: dark, milk or white chocolate.

Inevitably, every time a hot chocolate was ordered, it went down something like this:
"So, do you want that to be dark, milk, or white chocolate?"
"Oh, uh, dark milk."
"That's not a thing."
"What?"
"Dark milk. There's a comma. It's either/or"
"Oh, dark then, I guess."

I could have reworded it, sure, but this small, constant misunderstanding brought me a lot of joy. I like to think it snapped people out of autopilot and made them listen a little closer. This is probably not true.

If I could time travel, I'd go back to those moments. I could groundhog day that job.

So, let's reminisce together: How do you want your cake?

Dark, milk, white, please and thank you. Layered and blended into an orchestra of cocoa.

Half and Half Cookies (aka Hybrid Chocolate Chip and Reverse Chocolate Chip Cookies)

I've been sitting on this recipe for a while, even though my family unanimously agrees they were the best thing to come out of the oven in 2014.

It feels unfair to not start out the year by posting them, then, so you can get the best thing that will come out of your oven all year out of the way in the first few weeks.

Less to worry and plan about and all that. 

This may all sound ridiculous but these cookies are not your grandma's humble chocolate chip. A hybrid of chocolate chip and reverse chocolate chip cookies, the equally chewy, dense halves finally put an end to debates about what should be baked and for whom. You can munch on one side, both sides, or spilt them apart to share.

They're a bit more work than your standard mix-and-drop chocolate chip cookie, but so good and so worth that little extra effort.

Happy New Year!