Before delving into all things chocolate, I must preface by saying that I am so very blessed to have my cousin, Liz, living nearby. After getting married and moving away from home, she was (and still is) the only family I have around. I can't even describe the feeling just knowing she's literally around the corner (and when I say literally, I mean 2 miles away - literally!). It's nothing short of a personal blessing from God.
So! Chocolate. My lovely cousins Liz and Hope (Hope is up from Florida visiting Liz) spent the afternoon at my house spreading a little Christmas cheer - and a whole lot of chocolate! With a little Vince Gauraldi and a lot of Taylor Swift, we rocked out the fun and made a huge and delicious mess!
May I just say that dried chocolate all over your hands feels gross. It does. Chocolate covered pretzels are an absolute must this time of year, but they are an absolute mess! But you can not deny that getting your hands dirty in your food is a little fun ~ even if it takes 5 minutes to scrub off your fingers.
Two-thirds of the way through the covering of the pretzels, I remembered I had some white chocolate chips in the cabinet. Assuming chocolate is chocolate and it would all melt the same way, we threw them in the microwave and hit START. Word to the wise: white chocolate doesn't melt the same way as semi-sweet, milk, or dark chocolate. No, it really doesn't. You would think I would know this... But I do very little baking. I'm almost strictly a cook (not because I can't bake, I'm just too health-conscious to make this stuff regularly). Well, we pulled the bowl of white chips out of the microwave to find a dried out mess of crumbled chocolate. Don't bother googling "how to melt white chocolate" ~ you will simply find a dozen commands to do so in a double broiler. If you run into this mess, dribble a little milk on the crumbs and mix the chocolate slop until smooth and creamy. It may not be what the pros do, but it worked for us.
And then there was fudge. Mmmmm... fudge. Fudge is my absolute favorite holiday treat. It's sinfully sweet and absolutely incredible. It's also a mess to make, but cleaning up is fun when you get to lick the pot! You know it's irresistible if you find me - a faithful health nut - succumbing to it. Once my dish of fudge sets up, you bet you'll be seeing the recipe in here. And of course, you'll find me sneaking a square here and there.
A delicious afternoon with family ~ about as good as it gets!
6 comments:
awesome! Love the pics with chocolate on your noses! I just made cookies and fudge with my sisters today. And by "made cookies and fudge" I mean mostly stood around while the others did all the work! ;-) Hey, I didn't want to interfere with a working machine!
looks like you had fun! I could've told you that about the white chocolate...did the same thing at work a few weeks back lol
Haha it would seem that great minds think alike!!
mmmmm... yummy! I'm salivating right now... For the most part, I'm pretty much a whole foods person, but when it comes to the sweets, LOAD ME UP PLEASE!
This post kinda reminded me of a post I did a couple years ago: http://mbvalencia.blogspot.com/2008/12/yummy-winter-morning.html
I'm the exact same way, Barbi! I eat healthy all year long, and Christmas time is like... Death by chocolate! It's insane. Wonderful blog post! =)
ha! I eat healthy all year long *except* for the fact I eat sweets, lots and lots of sweets, all. year. long. I'm hoping the healthy foods override the bad?
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