Confession time: I am having way too much fun with my new pink KitchenAid and I’m happy to report that Ellie Krieger’s (surprise! surprise!) Triple Chocolate Cookies are definitely as decadent as they sound. I generally shy away from using whole wheat flour in my baking but I may have to reconsider that stance now. I’ve also been using those new Nestle Chocolatier baking chocolates recently and I highly recommend them. I’m pretty clueless about the science behind baking so I did freak out a bit when I realized that the recipe didn’t call for the addition of baking powder or baking soda but it didn’t appear to matter.

Cream Together	Add Oil & Eggs
Whisk Together the Dry Ingredients	Chocolates 2 & 3
Seriously Chocolate Batter	Silpat Love
Cool	Milk & Cookies - The Sixth Food Group

On Christmas Eve Eve my mother and I made a number of desserts including a Chocolate Yule Log.  I’ve wanted to make a Yule Log ever since I was a little girl and I saw one on a holiday episode of the NBC show Sisters.  For those of you who were fans that was the episode where everyone gets food poisoning from drinking Georgie’s homemade eggnog, Frankie punches out Mitch, and Teddy wanders around in the snowy backyard talking to Charles Dickens’s ghost.  To each their own I suppose.  Anyway, 10 years later my mom and I finally got around to whipping one up.  It was an utterly harrowing experience culminating in my mother being covered from head to toe in cocoa powder and me forgetting to add in all of the cake flour.  It seems that too many cooks in the kitchen and too much “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree” yields a less than ideal baking environment, but by some miracle the cake came out and was actually quite good. Obviously flour and measuring are seriously overrated.

I was given the following Sweet Potato Chili recipe by Hänni. Per her description the “lime and cocoa” give this dish a very “exotic flair” and after preparing it, I’d have to thoroughly agree. Vegetarian chilies are definitely one of my favorite hearty dinner options, although I did alter the recipe by adding some chicken stock to the chili in an effort to thin it out slightly. You could of course use vegetable stock, or leave it out entirely. I always like to pair my spicy dishes with Sweet Corn Cakes. Yes, I’m not ashamed to admit that I serve corn bread from a mix.

Prep	Slice
Saute	Add the Sweet Potato
Combine the Spices	Pour in the Tomatoes
Add the Beans & Jalapeño	Stir & Bring to a Simmer
Cover	Slice & Chop
One Last Stir	Dinner is Served