Fun Holiday Foods

Give a basket of potatoes for a holiday gift? Fool guests this season by making tasty marzipan-wrapped "potatoes" that have a chocolate center.

Ingredients:

2 cups finely crumbled chocolate cake
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 cup apricot preserves
one 7-oz. roll almond paste
1/4 cup cocoa powder
almond slivers

Preparation:

In a large bowl, combine cake crumbs with the walnuts and apricot preserves (figure A). Divide the mixture into four parts, and squeeze each portion into an oval shape. Cut the almond paste into four equal pieces. Flatten each of the almond paste pieces between two sheets of wax paper, then roll them each into five-inch disks.

Remove the paper and wrap the disk around the oval cake mixture and shape to look like a small potato (figure B).

Dust each "potato" with the cocoa powder (figure C), and create "eyes" in the potatoes by inserting almond slivers.

Ingredients:

apples
caramel
white chocolate
dark chocolate

Preparation:

Make apples three times better by triple dipping them in caramel, white chocolate and dark chocolate. Start by melting caramel, white chocolate and dark chocolate. Dip the apples in the caramel, then let them cool for about 30 minutes.

Next dip the apples in white chocolate, but leave a band or caramel visible at the top. After cooling for another half-hour, dip the lower portions of the apples in dark chocolate.

Pretzel Wreaths

Ingredients:

8 oz. vanilla chips, melted
72 miniature pretzel twists
red ribbon or licorice strings

Preparation:

Line two cookie sheets with waxed paper. Using six pretzels, form a circle on a prepared cookie sheet, placing the side of the pretzel with the single hole on the outside of the ring. Remove one pretzel from the circle and dip the inner section into the melted vanilla chips. Replace the pretzel and continue with the remaining pretzels.

Ingredients:

Hanukkah cookie cutters
blue hard-sugar candies, finely crushed
tea candles

Preparation: