Butterless Walnut Chocolate Chunkers #CreativeCookieExchange

Last weekend my house was filled to bursting with everything sweet and rich - aromas of buttery shortbread, spicy gingerbread, dried fruit and nuts macerated in wine, creamy fudge and pounds of both milk and bittersweet chocolate. Blocks of butter were perpetually out on the countertop to soften and the oven was on so much that my mom wanted to open the windows to cool off the kitchen - crazy in the -20C chill!

While butter, and dairy in general, are definitely heavy hitters in the holiday baking game, a lot of my friends and some of my family are avoiding milk and milk products - some are lactose intolerant, others outright allergic, still others vegan for ethical reasons. For them, the glory of the annual shortbread marathon is lost, along with the caramels, fudge, truffles and brioche. For them (and everyone else at the annual get-together on Christmas Eve), I whipped up a batch of these rather fancy, "grown up" chocolate chunk cookies. In lieu of butter, I chose a combination of canola and rich walnut oil, amplifying the flavour with minced walnuts and garnishing everything with chopped, high quality, super-dark chocolate. Like the Full of Secrets Chocolate Chip Cookies, they contained mayonnaise and custard powder to create and maintain the perfect balance of chewiness and tenderness.

Nuts in cookies are a tradition celebrated all over the world--and Creative Cookie Exchange has joined the party!

You can also use us as a great resource for cookie recipes. Be sure to check out our Pinterest Board and our monthly posts (you can find all of them here at The Spiced Life). You will be able to find them the first Tuesday after the 15th of each month! Also, if you are looking for inspiration to get in the kitchen and start baking, check out what all of the hosting bloggers have made:

• Honey Mixed Nut Bars from All That's Left Are The Crumbs
• Butterless Walnut Chocolate Chunkers from What Smells So Good?
• Almond Linzer Cookies from Spiceroots
• Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti from Oven Delights
• Pistachio, Rosewater and Cardamom Shortbread Cookies from A Shaggy Dough Story
• Salted Chocolate Pecan Caramel Bars from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Pistachio Cranberry Rugelach from A Baker's House
• White Chocolate Cranberry Nut Cookies from 2 Cookin Mamas
• Biarritz Sandwich Cookies from The Spiced Life

Peanut Butter, Banana & Honey Granola

I've been on a granola kick again this year, using the neutral bulking properties of oats and various grains to carry the flavour I happen to be craving at the time. With treats like Blueberry Crisp and a "Southern Belle"  peach cobbler for inspiration, I turned to one of my childhood comfort foods - the peanut butter, banana and honey sandwich.

I come by my PB love honestly. My whole family is guilty of eating mass quantities of the stuff - whether it's smeared on a slab of Challah, dolloped on crackers alongside a 5-alarm chili or simply on a spoon au naturale. More than that, Dad and I ADORE the sweet and salty combination of peanut butter and honey with the sticky caramelized notes of banana. This granola is everything the sandwich is, in portable, snackable form! Perfect for the holiday rush, a baggie of this crunchy cereal is easy to tuck away into your purse or backpack, and a lot cheaper than picking up something from the mall food court. To up the decadence even more with my second batch, I tossed in some dark chocolate chips as well. Either way, it has no added oil or fat except from the peanut butter (I even used an all-natural style, which worked perfectly), is perfectly sweet without being "brush-your-teeth required", and has an added hit of satiating protein and fibre from the toasted soy flour.

Shared with Gluten Free Fridays #225

Fruit & Nut Sourdough #BreadBakers

If you ask me, one of the absolute best parts of the winter holiday season is the smell of all the baking taking place. At home, the weekends (my only free time) are packed with the aromas of ginger, cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg, accented with sugar, butter, yeast, toasted nuts and chocolate. At work, my Home Ec classes are going to be churning out batches of my mom's delicious shortbread to take home, sure to be perfuming the school with the undeniably rich smell of baking butter.

While cookies and cakes are delicious, and perfectly at home (not to mention expected) during the holidays, my favourite treats are still the holiday breads. There's nothing quite like that aroma of the caramelizing crust, or a perfectly proofed dough just waiting to be punched down and shaped. In fact, I wait for (and demand) the opportunity to knock back, knead and braid our traditional Challah every year, and if I wake up early enough (read: 6AM on the 22nd of December, usually one of the first days of the holiday break!) I'm lucky enough to roll and decorate our Filled Holiday Brioche too.

While those two loaves must wait until Christmas to meet their (bread)maker, we still need a more or less "daily" bread - and why not start ramping up for holiday flavours than by mixing a few of them into a hearty, wheaten loaf? Not only did I get the nuts, raisins and oranges to sing with this cracked-wheat crusted loaf, but I kneaded in some of my favourite Winter fruit - Asian pear - as well. To keep things from getting too sweet, I decided to boost the yeasty flavour with my sourdough starter. The acidity from the starter also worked with the potato flakes to keep the crumb tender and moist - key for any whole grain bread. My final trick was actually a happy accident: having no "regular" milk in the house, I tossed in some leftover soymilk. What I got was a bread that simply soared to life, proofing beautifully both rises, all while managing to avoid giving the bread any sort of "off" or "beany" taste. Although I prefer cashew milk for drinking, soy will definitely be on my shelf for bread baking days!

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page.

We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient. This month's theme is Sweetened Holiday Yeast Breads, hosted by Stacy of Food Lust People Love.

Check out the other breads below:

• American-Style Panettone from Passion Kneaded
• Beehive Bread from Sara's Tasty Buds
• Candied Fruit Sweet Rolls from Cindy's Recipes and Writings
• Chestnut Roll Wreath from Food Above Gold
• Chocolate Cherry Brioche Buns from Baking Sense
• Chocolate Swirl Babka from Cook's Hideout
• Cranberry Sweet Rolls from Food Lust People Love
• Estonian Kringle from I Camp in my Kitchen
• Finnish Nissua Bread from Gayathri's Cook Spot
• Fruit & Nut Sourdough from What Smells So Good?
• Ginger Orange Stollen from SpiceRoots
• Holiday Wreath with Sweet Nut Filling from Hostess At Heart
• Kugelhopf from Ambrosia
• Marzipan Stollen from Palatable Pastime
• St. Lucia Buns from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Stollen Bread from Sneha's Recipe
• Sweet Milk Dinner Rolls from A Day in the Life on the Farm/

Rodent Seed Crunchies

While I am well known as a "cat mom" amongst my students, few people realize that, for at least a portion of the year, our home is also the nesting place for around 10 of my sister's pet rats. Most people (even the Grade 4-5 boys I teach) go all squeamish and squeal when I mention the little boys and girls that roost in our front rec room, but the truth is they are quite adorable. For one thing, they all have their own personalities and quirks - you can always tell who will be the mischief-maker on cage cleaning day. They are also incredibly intelligent animals, knowing their names and forming intricate family networks in their shared accommodations. A few of them have even befriended my cat, who (not unlike Finding Nemo's Dory) thinks she can "speak rodent" and chirps incessantly back and forth with them.

Stig!

Now, our family has always had a tradition of including a "pet stocking" by the fireplace for Santa to fill - one big ol' sock to house the treats and toys for all the current dogs / cats / fish / rodents living under our roof. Nowadays, the three kitties are the most noticeable non-human creatures here, and their gifts are easy to pick out - if it bounces, rolls, jingles or can be batted down the hallway at Mach 10, you're golden. The ratsies, or The Girls and Top Gear Boys (Jeremy, Richard, Stig and Diesel), are usually thrilled with the occasional box or paper towel roll, but when it comes to treats finding good quality, affordable ones can be a little trickier. The diet of a rat differs from rabbits, hamsters, and guinea pigs, and some foods are completely toxic (example: oranges are deadly to the male rats, but not the females). Thankfully my sister is almost 100% certified as a Vet Tech and knows her ratology inside-out, so she could guide me on how to make the gang their own crunchy biscuits this holiday.

Diesel

"Rum"drop Loaf Cake

Ever wound up with random candy that you neither remember buying nor particularly like? When I was cleaning out my baker's pantry (stuffed to the gills as always), I came across a sizeable bag of gumdrops that must have been a gift from a year or so ago. I generally detest gummy candy (sour keys are an exception) so I have no idea why I kept them around... needless to say, I had a choice to make: bake them up or toss them out.

I'm guessing you can figure out the option I went for.

I kept the candy (or at least enough for these cakes) because while I don't like the stick-in-your-molars texture and cloying fake-fruit flavours, some of the people I make gift baskets for at the holidays do - especially in fruitcake. The minor issue of the drops being rather old and dried out was solved with an extended bath in rum along with raisins and dried cranberries. Like most fruit mixes for holiday cakes, the longer the mixture soaks, the better - a good thing, since I had it in the fridge during the week while I was at work! By the time bake day arrived, everything was plump, sweet and boozy, ready to fold into the buttery, coconut-scented batter and keep things moist and decadent for weeks. I froze the loaves so they'll be ready when gifting season arrives, and I would suggest rather thin slices so as to avoid lodging a chunk of fruity candy in your molars!