I love to make sourdough bread. Recently in Cook’s Illustrated cooking magazine I learned a new trick–raising the loaves on parchment paper and then picking up the whole thing and depositing it in a heated cloche (thanks again Gavin and Jill) or Dutch oven. It works beautifully and produces the nice dark crust that the French think is so important

Here are pralines made in the microwave–very easy. One time I had no light brown sugar so had to substitute dark brown. Then I had the inspiration to replace the vanilla and small amount of water with bourbon. So now I call these “dark bourbon pralines” and they sell well at the Strafford library sale.

These are Florentines that Alison requested. Be very careful about starting holiday traditions or you’ll wind up having to make the same thing every year! Actually, these are kind of fun. The cookie part, essentially a lace cookie, is not hard, but then you have to temper chocolate to coat the bottom.

And speaking of tempering chocolate–here are the truffles I made at the same time I was coating the Florentines. I think I have the tempering part down pat but have not really mastered the dipping part. I have a special fork but still I wind up with some really ugly truffles. Anyway, they taste just as good. This year I made raspberry, Earl Grey tea, cognac and coconut/almond. I had plans to pipe a little symbol on each one to tell them apart but things got so frantic–chocolate all over everything, rushing back and forth to the stove to keep the melted chocolate at the right temperature–I never got around to marking them except for the ones with coconut. As a result my grandchildren ate a few of the ones with brandy and I hope that doesn’t start them on the road to perdition.. The plate the chocolates are resting on is a beautiful piece of an art deco tea set our son-in-law John brought us from Russia the last time he took a tour group there.

And finally, here is a Jamaican black cake. I had read about it years ago in Laurie Colwin’s “Home Cooking” but never got around to making it. It’s a fruitcake with all kinds of dried fruits marinated in a combination of madeira and black rum for three weeks, baked for three hours and then covered with a layer of marzipan and fondant icing. The burnt sugar flavoring that’s required never arrived so I had to substitute molasses. (My guess is that since the UPS truck can’t get up our snowy driveway they left it hanging on a tree branch as usual and it fell into the snow.) Anyway, it wasn’t so good that it’s going to start any tradition–Whew!

Have a great holiday and remember–holidays are free-fire zones where calories don’t count!