Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Sugar Plum Chocolates

You may feel like you’ve spent a greater portion of 2020 in front of a computer screen. Make sure you take a break.

White chocolate anything is my holiday treat and The Signature Chocolate-Covered Cookie Sampler from Sugar Plum, a mother-and-son team making the world sweet for us.

Nine milk, dark and white chocolate-covered super crunchy sandwich cookies come in a simply elegant golden tin with a chocolate-colored ribbon. There are peanut butter blends and this family also knows its way around bars and pumpkin spice. From all their offerings, this is the box that will get you hints of coconut, cranberry, toffee and drizzles that make your screen time break memorable. They’re on Dilley Street in Forty Fort, Pennsylvania, but go ahead to www.sugar-plum.com to get yours.

 

Missing your Beignet?

If you know what it means to miss New Orleans, you may get a longing for that aroma, flavor and puff of powdered sugar in your head.

Heidi and Micha Stampley have launched authentic beignet mix through Orleans Foods and Walmart is offering it. No standing in line in the French Quarter for a long wait. I thoroughly enjoyed the batch I made at home though they didn’t come out like the picture. How could they when I subbed oils and cooking methods using a wee skillet instead of a fryer, etc.?

I never claimed to possess frying skills, but I turned out a lovely batch of warm batter on a cool December morning and sprinkled on that mandatory sugar. The process is easy, as the bag claims. Just add water and let that dough proof a bit. But make sure you have the powdered sugar, too!

 

Milk ’N Berries

Rosa Porto’s original Tres Leches Recipe is the basis for more than a million of Porto’s Bake At Home Milk ’N Berries cake, which can arrive at your door seemingly too beautiful to eat. It’s not.

Do it. Eat those sweet berries, moist cake and rich, sweet cream but know your shipment is designed to thaw a day in the fridge. Can you resist? Some of the excess may collect and in a funny prep note, consumers are told to feel free to scoop it up for added richness or to “pour excess out before serving.” Guess which one I did?

If this Los Angeles bakery’s creation is your one treat on the way out of 2020, please indulge. Portosbakery.com will guide you.

 

Darragh Doiron is a Port Arthur area foodie getting her holiday vibe. Reach her at darraghcastillo@icloud.com