Chocolate Chip Cookies With Christmas Smarties

I know, chocolate chip cookies have been done so many times before, but I think the reason why is just that they're so good with gooey chocolate when they come out of the oven. This picture of cookies with smarties is of the batch my sister and I made last year. I wouldn't necessarily serve them to guests on Christmas day, but they are delicious to eat through December with a nice cup of tea.

We followed the recipe for chocolate chip cookies from the Joy of Baking website, but instead of putting in chocolate chips, we added red and green smarties. Also, rather than dropping the cookies onto a cookie sheet, we rolled the mixture into a log with some plastic wrap, refrigerated it to harden, and then sliced it into individual cookies. This gave the cookies a nice uniform look, although they would likely look very pretty as drop cookies too.

Peppermint Bark

Yesterday my sister and I made Peppermint Bark from the Joy of Baking website, which is a combination of white and milk chocolate with crushed candy canes sprinkled over top. It's crazy how simple this recipe is to make with how good it is. All it requires you to do is melt the milk chocolate, spread it in a pan, and refrigerate it until it hardens. Then you melt the other chocolate, spread it over top of the hardened chocolate, and sprinkle the crushed candy canes on top before setting the finished product in the fridge to harden again. It looks beautiful, Christmassy, and wonderful to serve as a confection on Christmas day! Chocolate bark also tends to be quite expensive, but it only cost approximately $6 for some good baking chocolate.

The Next Iron Chef

Yes, yet another cooking show! I haven't really been watching much of the Food Network lately. Personally, I find that a lot of the shows are redundant because they show similar recipes and techniques each episode, and I think that many of the hosts follow a formula too closely. I mean, it's ok to have some structure to an episode, but a host should be as natural as they can as well. As a result, The Next Iron Chef, is one of the few cooking shows I've been watching lately.

I really like The Next Iron Chef because there are some fantastic big name chefs on it this season. My personal two favourite contestants *Spoiler* were Chuck Hughes and Marcus Samuelsson, but they have since been eliminated. I personally enjoy Hughe's rustic presentation-style although that seems to have played a role in his downfall. I held a lot of support for him because I enjoy his show "Chuck's Day Off", which really gets to the heart of what cooking is all about, cooking for other people. He's also a fellow Canadian, being from Montreal, and I thought it would be cool to have a Canadian Iron Chef. I'm really interested in Marcus Samuelsson's cooking style as well, because it's a mixture of his Ethiopian and Swedish heritage. The judges put his elimination down to the business of his dishes, but African cuisine, let alone Ethiopian cuisine, is so little known by even hardcore foodies that I wonder if the judges missed the boat with him entirely.

I truly enjoy all the remaining chefs as well; Chiarello, Zakarian, Guarnaschelli, and Falkner. All of them, save for Guarnaschelli, have been in the bottom two where they've participated in a cook-off challenge, but all have played valiantly. Personally, I think that Chef Zakarian and Chef Falkner are the real geniuses, however, as Zakarian's technique is constantly praised and Falkner continuously puts out interesting and original dishes. Souffle with Tuna Jerky? Who do you think is going to win The Next Iron Chef. Personally, I think Elizabeth Falkner might stand a chance.

Music to Cook By.......

I really love listening to music and I find it helps to pass the time when doing mundane housework like washing up dishes. In fact I think it brightens up any situation even when doing something you love, like me with cooking. I thought it would be fun to do a post about some of my favourite music to listen to while cooking or baking.

Let's start with something I've been listening to a lot lately, like 102.5, which is a radio station from Buffalo that plays Christmas music 24/7. In November, it starts off by playing a small variety of Christmas music, but as December 25th draws closer, they start playing a larger variety. I find it so cheerful at this time of year, especially when Christmas baking, and it helps me get into the Christmas spirit.

Other times in the year, like in Summer, I like to listen to a lot of World music. Lila Downs (above) is a Mexican-American singer who was trained in Opera, but reverted back to her roots to sing both traditional Mexican music and original songs. I really love her album "One Blood" because it really drives home the fact that even though one often thinks of a country/region as having one type of people, often that area is more multicultural than one thinks. This album combines African, Eastern, Spanish, and Native musical influences, all of which play a great part in Mexican culture.

Astrud Gilberto is a Brazilian singer with German origins, who was big in the 1960s. I love her for her jazzy, Bossa Nova style, and for her voice that's never quite on pitch, but that's her style so it's ok. "The Girl From Ipanema" is probably her most famous song, so if you haven't heard it, go listen to it. It's such a treat!



This past Fall I found myself gravitating to more rock or folk-influenced music like Fleet Foxes and their fantastic album "Helplessness Blues". Their music is definitely 60s inspired because of the psychedelic and otherworldly sound, particularly on what I like to call the free jazz section of the song "The Shrine/An Argument". There is no weakness in this album and all songs are a highlight.



I also love the band, Beirut, led by Zack Condon who is a multi-instrumentalist. This music is folky, heavily textured, and worldly. I think this would be fantastic music to travel by!



In late-Winter, the acapella group from Finland, Rajaton, are a wonderful listen. Particularly their album "Maa" which includes the haunting song, "Ikävöi, Ihminen!".



In the Springtime I am driven to more earthy music, specifically acoustic instruments with sometimes sparse accompaniment and an angelic voice. Irish singer, Cara Dillon, fits the bill perfectly with her folky sound and inclusion of Celtic instruments.