Walnut, Date and Banana Bundt Cake

I was browsing the web this morning looking for a recipe to use up extra walnuts and dates. I got a little too exited at Costco before Christmas and bought industrial sized bags of walnuts to bake cookies and dates to makes goat cheese stuffed dates wrapped in bacon. Both were excellent but too much of a good thing … is too much.

Chocolate Pecan Thumbprint Cookies

This should be the last installment of my cookie marathon as I am burnt out and because my electric bill must have exploded with the oven on all day for a week. I keep saying each cookie is my favorite but this one might as well be the one. They are a good mix of flavor, sweet and bitter, and textures, soft and crunchy. Guests seemed to be impressed and my mother in law’s Christmas party yesterday night. These thumbprints take a little more time to realize than a simple drop or icebox cookie but they are well worth it.

Russian Cashew Teacakes

Today was phase two of my holiday food marathon (and I use this word in the least derogatory way possible). With finals, I almost forgot Christmas would come so fast. Only one more week and I couldn’t be any more exited. I baked chocolate snowballs and these cashew delicacies.

Russian teacakes, Mexican wedding cakes, sandcakes, snowballs, Italian butter nut, however you call them, these little white balls are always a pleasure. They a like a sable with a very buttery and nutty taste. They are not too sweet either, which is a nice break once in a while during the holiday season. Cashews are a fun way to change this recipe around a little, as they are usually made with pecans.

Chocolate-peanut biscotti, dipped in chocolate

<Yearly, holiday baking always has to start with these biscotti for me. They are not particularly christmassy but they are the first cookies I ever baked by myself so I have some sort of special attachment to them, sort of a first step into woman-hood. I was expecting a disaster as I had always been told baking had to be precise to the milligram but I was happily surprised when these golden brown cookies speckled with chocolate came out.