Our Journey: Bake-N-Blog: Holiday Edition

I've been aching to whip out my Kitchenaid and bake something sweet for the past couple weeks. I've even stocked up on some cream cheese at the last sale so I can bake up a cheesecake when the mood hits. So what did I do when I read about Kelly from Jax Does Design holding a Bake-N-Blog? Sign up of course! I went through the list of recipes provided and decided to give Chocolate Crackles a try. I mean, what else could be better than chocolate rolled in sugar.. and more sugar? :) So here goes....

This was a two part recipe:
Part 1 - Mix everything together, divide it into four parts, wrap and fridge.
Part 2 - Roll each part into one inch balls, roll in sugar, roll in icing sugar, and bake.

So I did Part 1 Monday night, wrapped it up, threw it in the fridge, no problems. The only step that took a bit more time was chopping up the chocolate for the melting process, and trying not to melt too much in my hands.

Part 2, I did Tuesday night (tonight, just in time for the Bake-N-Blog.. yes, I procrastinated!), and on the right, you can see my wrapped portions, with the measured sugars ready for rolling! And of course, my laptop with the recipe loaded.

I confess, I only baked one of the four portions tonight, because I'm saving the other three portions for a potluck this weekend. (I hope that doesn't disqualify me for the Bake-N-Blog!) But hey, that's the pro to this recipe, you can save the portions for a later time!

Part 2 of this recipe was easy enough to do. However, I soon realized that time was of the essence, because the longer I took to roll each ball, the more the next one would melt in the palms of my hands! I actually had to take a break, wrap up half of it and threw it in the freezer for five minutes before I could keep rolling. A tip for anyone using this recipe: Instead of rolling each ball in your palms, roll in sugar, roll in icing sugar and then start on the next piece. Try rolling in palms, roll in sugar, next. You can always roll them all in icing sugar in the end with less melting issues.

Below, you can see my chocolate palms, and a nosy Kingsley bunny trying to get a piece of the action.

And here is what the chocolate crackles looked like fresh from the oven:

And how could I resist showing them in our Christmas Reindeer dish!

Final verdict? Yum Yum Yum! Crackly on the outside (because of the sugar), and chocolatey soft on the inside! And they only took 14 minutes to bake! The portioning is definitely a huge plus. :) And that's my conclusion to the Bake-N-Blog: Holiday Edition!