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Hark, the chocolate angels sing

If I could catch the house cats, chances are I’d dip them in chocolate. It’s that time of year.

 And here I am, married to someone who only likes peanut butter cups because of the peanut butter. Before the December feeding frenzy finishes, he’ll have some sugar cookie cutouts, but for today: Mas chocolate. I’ll use the rest of yesterday’s truffle chocolate to dip dried apricots and then bake and freeze rocky road brownies. In the fridge already: The truffles. In the freezer: A chocolate-pecan-bourbon pie. The peanut butter cups — tucked away on a shelf where I can’t see them.

Because as you know if you cook, eat and gain weight, you must eventually blow the whistle on sugar consumption while going full speed ahead on cooking. And how did I do that yesterday? Protein at every meal: A turkey sandwich for breakfast, baked chicken for lunch and tuna for supper. I must do this every day during the holiday food fest because I feel better, snack not at all and go to bed and sleep.

I also ate one little truffle with lunch. I counted it as about 100 calories and wasn’t gnawed by feelings of deprivation all afternoon.

food & family magazine’s Oreo Truffles
1 8-ounce package full-fat cream cheese
1 package regular Oreos (1 pound, more or less)
2 boxes (8 ounces each) good-quality semisweet baking chocolate
 
Unwrap cream cheese into mixing bowl to soften at room temperature. Crumb

Store truffles, tightly covered, in refrigerator after chocolate loses its sheen and hardens.

Oreos in food processor, reserving 1 cup crumbs. Add remainder crumbs to cream cheese and blend until smooth. Melt chocolate in microwave, stirring every 30 seconds to avoid scorching.

 
Make the cream cheese-Oreo mixture into 48 balls. Dip in melted chocolate, set on waxed paper to dry and sprinkle crumbs over.

Category:

Candy, Chocolate, Desserts, Holiday cooking, Holiday eating

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Out of sight, out of feeble mind

Nobody, meaning me, can eat just one of these 93-calorie jokers.

This was not a good weekend, healthy eating-wise. Well, actually, lots of what I ate was healthy food with the key word here being “lots.” Lots and lots. Like Ray Milland finding the bottle in the overhead light, I made choco espresso gems, pumpkin pie bars and peanut butter cups and sampled them all.

The sound of my falling off the wagon was  likely heard from here to Santa’s Workshop. Ditto for my howls upon discovering the 1,000 calories in Red Lobster’s Warm Chocolate Chip Lava Cookie a la mode (we split it but still…)

The one smart thing I did was ask He Who Can Sleep and Forget Any Temptation to hide the Cape Cod potato chips or they, too, would be gone this morning. If I don’t see a food, I’m likely to forget about it. Leaving out any temptations means I’ll see them and lay waste unto them.

Which makes me the perfect target of television advertising. Suggest it to me, dance it across the screen with a snappy jingle and I’m in the kitchen looking for it. Some part of my resolve is evidently warm chocolate lava when it comes to snack foods at night or to just walking away (more effective than saying “No”).

So this morning it’s back out on the road to walk and think about the errors of my ways. And if I put the last of those darned peanut butter cups in my husband’s lunch box, I will have forgotten all about them by the time I’ve walked a few miles.

Here’s the quick and easy recipe. There is no simpler way to enjoy your chocolate unless you just take it in an IV.

Taste of Home’s homemade peanut butter cups

7 ounces milk or dark chocolate

1 tablespoon vegetable shortening

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter

1/4 cup creamy peanut butter

Line 12 cups of mini muffin pan with gem papers. Melt chocolate, shortening and butter together in microwave, stirring every 30 seconds to keep chocolate from scorching. Put 1 tablespoon of this mixture in the bottom of each paper cup.

Melt peanut butter in microwave, stir and divide among 12 cups. Top with remainder of chocolate mixture. You can refrigerate to harden quickly or just leave on countertop if you’re not in any hurry to misbehave.

Category:

Candy, Chocolate, Desserts, Holiday cooking, Holiday eating, Simple foods

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