If you have kids (or adults) who don’t like pumpkin pie—or if you want to bring a memorable house gift—bring two dozen of these! If you’re looking for a kids’ project, ditto: Give them frosted cupcakes and let them do the decorating.

You can bake your favorite chocolate cupcake recipe from scratch, use a cake mix, or in a pinch, purchase plain chocolate cupcakes. You can buy frosting or make your own.

While we enjoy the convenience of a cake mix—which is simply saves you the time of measuring and mixing the ingredients—we’re much fussier about homemade frosting. Most canned chocolate frosting tastes…canned. Here’s our recipe for homemade chocolate buttercream frosting.

 
RECIPE: THANKSGIVING TURKEY CUPCAKES

Ingredients for 24 Cupcakes

1. PREPARE the cake mix according to package directions to make 24 cupcakes. Bake and let cool completely. Frost each cupcake with chocolate frosting.

2. HOLD each cupcake upside down and dip into the chocolate sprinkles. For feathers, push five pieces of candy corn upside down into the top of the cupcake.

3. ADD two candy eyeballs and push a candy corn into the cupcake for a beak.

4. PIPE some red frosting next to the candy corn beak, or adhere a strip of red fruit leather.
 
VARIATION: Use malted milk balls as the head; press into the cupcake. Affix the candy eyeballs with frosting, and pipe a small amount of yellow frosting, and a small amount of red next to it, as the beak and the wattle.
 
Here’s the original recipe plus a video of the preparation. Find more delicious recipes at SixSistersStuff.com.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ICING & FROSTING

The difference between frosting and icing is that icing is made with confectioners’ sugar (also called icing sugar or 10x sugar), while frosting is made with granulated sugar (table sugar).

Because most people don’t understand this difference, the two words are often used interchangeably.

Everything is delicious at Cake, a Chicago bakery and NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week (we reviewed it under a previous name, Damn Good Cookies). You can send anything on the menu as a gift, and it will delight the most demanding recipients.

It is not a gluten-free bakery, but there is gluten-free treasure to be found:

If you’re on the hunt for a gluten-free cookie gift for someone with a discerning palate, look no further than their specially Chubby Wubby Defloured, a sophisticated, delectable, gluten-free chocolate cookie.

The cookie sandwich is indeed chubby, Two bittersweet chocolate cookies, studded with chocolate chips, are sandwiched with a layer of chocolate ganache. Trust us: You’ll want more than one box.

In fact, the original Chubby Wubby Chocolate Cookie, made with conventional wheat flour, was so popular that the gluten-free version was created. The conventional Chubby Wubby has led to a family of other Chubbies—different fillings with the same delicious chocolate cookies:

 
A 12-piece box is $32.00, a 16-piece box is $38.00. Get yours at Cake-Chicago.com.
 
WHAT’S GANACHE?

Ganache is a velvety smooth blend of chocolate and cream, often with butter added. It is used as a frosting for cake and as a filling for pastries and chocolates. Rolled into balls, it becomes a chocolate truffle.

Here’s more about ganache and why it translates in French to idiot or imbecile.
 
  

For the holiday season, Sauza Tequila tweaked the recipe to create a holiday version: Cranberry Orange Margarita. Since Margaritas already include orange liqueur, they substituted cranberry juice for the lime juice and voilà!

Sauza made the recipe with Sauza Blue Silver 100% Agave Tequila. You can use any silver (also called blanco [white] or plata [which means silver]) tequila. For reference, here are the different types of tequila).

RECIPE: CRANBERRY ORANGE MARGARITA

Ingredients Per Drink

A Margarita for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Photo courtesy Sauza Tequila.

1. PREPARE the garnishes: Freeze the cranberries. Using a channel knife (you can buy a combination channel knife and zester), cut a long spiral from one orange (try to do it in a single strip, all around the orange). Cut the peel strips into strips that are 6 inches long. Twist the peels around a bar spoon (or other slender spoon) and reserve for later.

2. ZEST the other orange with a zester or spice grater to remove just the peel (none of the pith) and combine with sugar.

3. CUT the zested orange into wedges. Rub a wedge of orange around the rim of the glass. Roll the glass through the sugared orange zest.

4. COMBINE the rest of the sugar and orange zest mixture in a shaker with the cranberry juice, orange juice, tequila and orange liqueur. Twist the orange peel over the drink and place in the prepared glass. Top with the frozen cranberries and serve.
 
MORE ON MARGARITAS

Check out the history of the Margarita and more Margarita recipes.

Find more tequila cocktail recipes at SauzaTequila.com.
  

We found these photos on the Facebook page of Jarlsberg USA, and liked the idea for holiday entertaining as well as family snacking.

Make four or five different versions to serve with cocktails, or one or two types for a TV snack. For a children’s activity, you can set out ingredients and let kids assemble their own snacks.

The key to visual appeal is to offset the pale color of most cheeses with other, bright colored ingredients. Turkey and Swiss cheese may be a popular combination, for instance, but to the eye it’s beige and beige. Go for bright and appealing.

Then, all you need are four-inch skewers, plain or twisted (for a fancier touch). Or, check out our festive party picks for stars, evergreen trees metallic fringe and colored cellophane tips.

Use the list below to pick two or three ingredients to pair with the cheese. The skewers are plenty tasty as is, but you can serve them with a dish of honey mustard for dipping. You can buy honey mustard, or make your own by adding honey, sugar or noncaloric sweetener to mustard, in a proportion to your liking.
 
COLORFUL CHEESES

In addition to your favorite cheeses, consider options beyond beige. Check out these special cheeses with deep colors:

Two popular pairings with cheese: dried apricots and basil-tomato. Photo courtesy Jarlsberg USA.

 
Then, it’s time to pick your add-ons:

PROTEINS

 
VEGETABLES

 
Send us photos of your favorite creations!

Like chocolate? Like chile heat? Have we got a drink for you!

Following up on the success of their coffee liqueur, Patrón XO Cafe, Patrón Tequila has launched a chocolate version: Patrón XO Cafe Incendio.

The name is a bit confusing. While there may be coffee (cafe) in the recipe, the drink presents as chocolate, chocolate, chocolate.

With a base of Patrón’s silver tequila, the deeply chocolatey liqueur uses premium quality criollo chocolate, blended with “Aztec spices”—so called because the Aztecs (and the Mayas before them) flavored their chocolate drink* with the heat of arbol chiles, plus vanilla, cinnamon, musk and cornmeal—no sweetener.

Incendio, fiery, is the right word: This velvety liqueur with a luscious aroma is at once deeply chocolate and sizzling hot.

After you buy a bottle for yourself, get some as gifts. You will be amado, beloved.

In addition to sipping, enjoy it: