Can someone suggest a chocolate dessert for Christmas?

Mousse au Chocolat from the original New YorkTimes Cook Book. It’s foolproof, can be made in advance, makes a lot and is delicious. I made it for a dinner party last New Year’s Eve and was asked to make it again for this one.

Go buy a chocolate mousse cheesecake.
No one will complain.

I have chocolate and peanut butter recipes that I love. I’m making them both for the holidays (at the request of my family!).

Cakeballs are good. Make a chocolate cake according to directions. Cool and crumble. Add a can of frosting and mix well. Refrigerate about 2 hours, then roll into small balls, and dip in chocolate coating. They taste like truffles.

Or make a basic Bacardi Rum Cake but substitute mini chocolate chips for the nuts, chocolate cake mix, chocolate pudding, and bourbon for rum. Melt chocolate chips with a little cream, and use as a poured icing over the top.

Death by chocolate cake.DEATH BY CHOCOLATE CAKE

½ lb. sweet butter, softened
1 c. self-rising flour
4 eggs, room temperature
1 tsp. vanilla
1 c. sugar
1 (14 oz.) can Hershey’s syrup
Confectioners sugar or whipped cream for garnish

Put all ingredients into one bowl. Mix until smooth. Pour into spring formed pan lined with foil or greased Pyrex dish. Bake 1 hour at 350 degrees. Cool. Remove.

Seems simple but I make the brownie recipe on the back of the Baker’s Unsweetened Chocolate baking squares box (delicious) with crushed up candy canes in them, and sprinkled on top. Appealing to both the eyes and the mouth!

Pudding Pie!

Get a pie crust, bake it for 10 minutes or so.
Make chocolate pudding, perhaps using slightly less milk then the recipe calls for.
Put the pudding into the pie crust and let it sit in the refrigerator over night.
Pile a load of whipped cream on top and serve.

It is delicious. Make four more than you think you’ll need.

TV ROLL!

@sliceswiththings – I use that recipe all the time! Instead of candy canes, I swirl caramel through it and add cashews. And I use about a ¼ cup less sugar than called for. People think I’m a brownie genius… and I let them!

If it wasn’t for the travel time, this recipe from Gale Gand is outstanding. You could make a more travelable frosting if you know of one.

@tedibear39 Haha me too! I tell them it’s my secret recipe:) Or that it has been in the family for years. Caramel and cashews are a good idea, I’ll have to try them out next time. I also use Earth Balance instead of butter which I think makes them even more delicious.

@tedibear39 That cake sounds fantastic! I have a big tupperware thing made for transporting cakes, so I don’t think the travel would be an issue. Do you have any ideas on how I can decorate it to make it a bit more festive for the holiday? I have a sort of reputation for making desserts that taste fantastic but look like they’ve been sat on or dropped. :(

@everyone: Great ideas, and so many tempting things!

@filmfann Um, that’s cheating, dude! I could totally lose my family status as the dessert queen! Shame on you!

Raspberry jam layered between brownies is pretty good, too. Split the batter in half, melt the jam in the microwave. Put half the batter in the pan, then jam, then the rest of the batter. Bake as usual. Once it cools, dust with powdered sugar.

I used to make a Buche de Noel every Christmas. It’s fun, and while it’s not srtictly a chocolate dessert you can certainly use cocoa in the sponge and chocolate butter cream icing.

@pdworkin I had to look that up, and I’m absolutely positive that if attempted it, it would look more like a Buche de Toillette. ;)

Oh, Julia Child has a lovely, step-by-step illustrated recipe. It’s a snap, it’s fun, everyone oohs and ahhs and it is really, really delicious. The only down side is that it’s a little time consuming, but it’s so much fun, especially if you have help.

I wish I had a picture of the pumpkin pie I made for Thanksgiving. It tasted awesome, but it looked like crap. Still, I will look up the Julia Child recipe and see if I am feeling brave!

Report back!

Make stained glass window cookies. They are delicious, cool to look at and really easy. In a large, heavy duty sauce pan, melt ½ stick of butter. That’s right, I said it. REAL BUTTER! Then melt 12 oz of chocolate semi sweet morsels. Remove from heat and cool a bit. Dump in a bag of colored miniature marshmallows. Stir to coat. On two sheets of waxed paper, sprinkle chopped nuts or flaked coconut. Pour half the mixture onto each. Roll, wrap and chill. Transport in log form. Slice just before serving. Mmmmm.

@pdworkin: Do you throw boiled sugar syrup strings across broom sticks to make spider webs and do you make little, perfect meringue mushrooms, like my loony ex-sis-in-law used to?

The finished product belonged in a museum and not on the dining room table.

I do the meringue mushrooms, but I never heard of the spider webs. That sounds really cool. Have any pics?

@gailcalled It belongs on a dining room table where Milo can get it!

If you want it home made, make brownies, and use chocolate icing on them.
My sister does this whenever I see her.
When I come home, my kids ask if I brought back any.

@pdworkin: This was years ago. The verisimilitude (my word-of-today) was startling yet odd. I bet @Harp knows how to do the sugar syrup strings.

@janbb: Milo just polished off the rest of my cauliflower, coconut milk, cilantro soup when I left the bowl unattended for a minute.

Well, mine isn’t veri similit. It looks like cake. But, tant pis, everyone seemed to like it, every year.

@MissAusten, the buche de noel is really a lot easier than it looks. It’s a chocolate sponge cake baked in a jelly roll pan or cookie sheet with sides. I put waxed or parchment paper on the bottom of the pan. Bake the cake, then turn it onto a smooth dish towel dusted with cocoa. While it’s warm, roll it up with the dish towel inside the roll, and let it cool rolled up. Unroll and frost with buttercream then re-roll, and frost the outside. My grandmother would make pound cake this way, and fill with jam, then sprinkle the outside with powdered sugar. (Use powdered sugar on the cloth instead of cocoa.) Or your can fill the cake with softened ice cream and freeze until ready to serve.

Try a chocolate bundt cake, and sprinkle w/ powedered sugar…
or German chocolate cake
or chocolate pecan pie
or chocolate mousse (just make whipped cream then fold in chocolate pudding and it’s really easy and yummy!)
I don’t have any of the recipes on hand… but they’re pretty basic, there’ll be all sorts of recipes for all of them on the web…

If you want something fairly easy and NOT too costly…. Try the Chocolate Dream Pie .

You only use Cold Milk, Pudding, Graham Cracker Crust, and Dream Whip . ( I puse chocolate sprinkles when it is all finsihed .. NO Baking Required !) Reveipe on the box of MOST Jello Chocolate Pudding Boxes and on the boxes of Dream Whip….

Takes only about 10–15 minutes to prepare… then let chill for at least an hour and you’ve got a delicious dessert….

@MissAusten – My worry was cream cheese frosting for 2 hours unrefrigerated. I don’t remember enough from sanitation class to know if it would be okay. I’m sure you could make a less worrisome frosting. As for decorating, I always think simple is best. Maybe a series of frosting rosettes or stars (stars are super easy to pipe) around the top edge of the cake and a maraschino cherry half on top of each of one. Or a toasted nut. For that matter, you could toast some kind of nut (I’m fond of hazelnuts), chop it and put it in the filling part of your frosting. Then do the rosettes on the top with a toasted hazelnut on each one. Or sprinkle chopped toasted nuts on the top. If you know how to make chocolate curls, those would be cool on top, too. Or even shaved chocolate. Or…. okay, I’ll stop now.

@PandoraBoxx – Raspberry jam in brownies sounds wonderful!

@pdworkin; Tant mieux. 17 hours to producer a gorgeous and rich dessert makes more sense than pre-made graham cracker crust, Dream Whip and jello pudding.

My aunt used to make chocolate chip cheesecake—basically, a cheesecake with some chocolate chips stirred in. (Maybe about 1 C? I never looked at her recipe.)

Or you could do a chocolate swirled cheesecake. Or a chocolate turtle cheesecake.

(Am I wrong in assuming that cheesecake travels well?)

Okay, this looks absolutely fabulous.

((((((((((@gailcalled)))))))))) Huggzzzzzzzzzzzz! lol!

@pdworkin Hope you’ve™‘d Huggzzzzzzzzz – otherwise I call it.

sure, steal my best material, @janbb. Who are you, anyway, Henny Youngman?

@pdworkin (Waggles eyebrows) I’ve always preferred to think of myself as Groucho Marx!

Groucho wrote his own schtick, bubelleh

Ah, why don’t you shtick it up your

See I can write my own lines!

@tedibear39 I think the high sugar content in the frosting slows spoilage enough that the drive will be OK.

So, I decided to make the cake @tedibear39 suggested. I’ll be baking it after we go out to lunch with family this afternoon.

@pdworkin Maybe next year I’ll try that Yule Log. This year was too rushed (I also made candies and hundreds of cookies). Next year I’ll start earlier, and have my daughter help. That way, if it doesn’t look very nice I can blame it on her. She’s just a kid, after all.

Thanks for all of the suggestions, many of which I am sure I will use since it always seems to be my assignment to bring dessert to family functions!

Oh boy, MissAusten, the pressure of it all!!!

@tedibear39 No worries, the cake was great! I don’t know if you saw my baking emergency question (I forgot to buy cocoa, duh!), but with a little expert Fluther advice I was able to substitute melted chocolate chips. I got a lot of compliments on the cake! Thanks so much for the suggestion!

YAY! I’m glad you worked it out and that you enjoyed it. I’ve never had a Gale Gand recipe fail on me.