Chocolate-and-Spice Treats for the Holidays

Posted by Brooklyn Bill

Chocolate-and-spice—especially chocolate-and-ginger—is a favorite flavor combination of mine. In this post, I'm going to do a wrap-up of chocolate-and-spice treats I've made around the holidays the past few years, with links to the full stories on my personal blog. It's sorta like one of those lame-ass sitcom episodes in which they repeatedly flash back to things that happened in other episodes so they don't have to write that much new material. Only with 100% less lame-ass-ness and absolutely no clips of Kirk Cameron as Mike Seaver!

My favorite cookies of all time are Martha Stewart's Chocolate-Gingerbread Cookies. I also love to make ice cream; during the spring and summer, I typically make 6 to 10 batches of various flavors (and I'll make the occasional batch in fall and winter). So it was probably inevitable that I'd eventually get the big idea to make an ice cream version of the cookie. The results, I gotta say, were pretty damn good.

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In that same post I linked to above, at "results," I wrote about cut-out cookies I made last weekend that are also called Chocolate-Gingerbread Cookies. The recipe came from Matt Lewis, co-owner of Baked bakery in Red Hook. The basset hound–shaped cookie cutter came from a friend who knows how crazy I am about that breed, especially my guy Rudy

and my sister's girl Molly

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Two Christmases ago, I made three Chocolate Babkas, which also contain cinnamon and so meet the criteria for inclusion in this post. The past five or six years, I've made some kind of breakfast treat to share with family and friends around Christmas, and these babkas were definitely among the best of the bunch. They must have made a strong impression on my nephews, Matt and Mike, because when I asked for suggestions on what breakfast treat to make this year, they said, "Babkas!"

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Finally, three Hanukkahs ago, I made Cocoa Spice Doughnuts that didn't meet my expectations because the chocolate flavor was almost totally masked by the cinnamon in the doughnut itself and the glaze on top. My sister's family and the Schultieses really enjoyed them, though. If I were to make them again, I'd definitely pump up the amount of cocoa in the dough.