Merry Christmas!

Christmas is a time for food and fun with friends and family, and, also, a time to make those special dishes that you make only once a year. There's gingerbread and plum cake, Christmas logs and peppermint cookies, and then, there are the things you make only once a year because your nervous system might collapse if you tried any more than that. I discovered one such recipe this Christmas, just in time for the Holidays and for the Winter Wonderland outside my window, not to mention this column and blog.

My roommate sent me a recipe for Penguin truffles, which she found at "2 Stews," a cooking blog by a former flight attendant. They were too cute--not to mention, too delicious--to resist: a chocolate truffle sculpted to look like a penguin, dipped in white chocolate, and finished with a coat of dark chocolate.


I made two batches of these little critters this week (and that's enough for one year). They were ridiculously time consuming and labor-intensive, but, hey, it's Christmas and they sure were worth the effort for the "oohs and ahs" and the delicious result.

Being a child at heart and having an excuse to play with food, I posed my penguins in various situations: attacking the Christmas tree, staring at the Christmas turkey, huddling around a chocolate egg, and marching in the snow.


Check out the recipe from 2Stews (http://www.2stews.com/2009/12/penguin-truffles.html) and make your own on a snowy day!

Merry Christmas!