Never baked stollen before? Start here. This moist, flavorful, non-yeast stollen can go from mixing bowl to warm-on-the-table in just 1 hour. Check out our blog post from a year ago today: Stollen Moments.

Have you crashed into the Sugar Wall yet?

You know, that point sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas when you’ve FINALLY had your fill of cookies and fruitcake, candy and rich pastries, and are ready for, oh, a piece of bread and butter, or a bowl of Rice Chex (preferably NOT in the form of Party Mix)?

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Oh, no…

NOT another post about FRUITCAKE!

Well, we figured you’d be out at the mall shopping today, and maybe we could slip this one past you.

Or not.

If you’ve managed to get past the word FRUITCAKE, read on. This chocolate chunk, pecan, cherry/cranberry version might just be the recipe that finally tickles your fruitcake fancy–

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It’s that time of year again: the holiday season, those four weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas when peppermint joins chocolate center stage.

At heart, I’m a chocolate traditionalist. Not for me chocolate/orange, chocolate/raspberry, or chocolate/any other fruit combo, thanks very much. I’ll take my chocolate dark and plain.

OK, I do make exceptions. Chocolate-dipped strawberries… plump dried apricots half-coated in dark chocolate… even chocolate cherry cordials, with their sticky liquid dripping off your fingers – all good.

And chocolate/coffee – more than good. Exquisite.

But chocolate cake with Grand Marnier frosting? No thanks.

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What’s the quintessential English Christmas dessert?

Ah, so many to choose from… Plum pudding? Trifle?

Sugarplums, dancing in your head and right onto the dessert buffet?

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Ah, cookies.

For me, they’re part of what makes the holidays so wonderful. Each year my sister and I bake dozens and dozens of cookies, from traditional varieties like gingerbread and sugar cookies to new favorites like Magic in the Middles and Chewy Coconut Chocolate Chunks.  We take time off from work just before Christmas to make, bake, and decorate everything, turning my kitchen and dining room into Cookie Central for a few days while we finish the cookies and package them up into gifts for family and friends.

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You know, I never, EVER thought I’d utter the following words:

I like panforte.

But I do; I really do.

Growing up, this classic Italian Christmas sweet fell under the heading of “icky sticky stuff with weird nuts and peels.” I mean, why put a piece of panforte in your mouth, when you could oh-so-easily munch on a gingerbread cookie or a Snickers bar?

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Pity the poor fruitcake!

It’s derided mercilessly. It’s re-gifted shamelessly.

It’s the butt of many a joke: “Best thing to do with fruitcake: use it as a doorstop.”

Manitou Springs, Colorado, holds an annual Great Fruitcake Toss, “a strangely compelling spectacle in which participants fling fruitcakes through the air, competing in events that emphasize distance, accuracy, and showmanship.”

This according to Failure magazine, an “online publication full of humankind’s boldest missteps.”

Fruitcake: a bold misstep!

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From chestnuts roasting on an open fire to dreaming by the fire in a winter wonderland, the holiday season is filled with references to crackling warm fires and the comfort that they bring to young and old alike. So, how did the traditional (and necessary!) fires of winter come to be represented by a cake? Let’s find out… (more…)

C’mon, admit it. You KNOW it wouldn’t be December without candied red cherries.

Never mind those icky green ones. I mean, where did THAT idea ever come from, that translucent, kelly-green cherries would be something you’d willingly put in your mouth?

As any self-respecting 4-year-old would say: EWWWWWWW. (more…)