Georgia Fink- Peppermint Bark
Right after Halloween is over, stores move every holiday item to the front. All of the treats that are packaged in colorful holiday boxes and bags are put on shelves that you see right when you walk in at almost every grocery store. One of the best holiday treats has to be peppermint bark. A treat with both milk chocolate and white chocolate layers stacked on top of each other and peppermint sprinkled all over the top. The flavors of this dessert blend together very well, with the creamy chocolate melting in your mouth and the sharp peppermint cutting through the chocolatey flavors. As both a chocolate and a mint lover, I was to try this treat due to the similarity it draws to mint chocolate chip ice cream (one of my favorite ice creams). After eating it for the first time, I was surprised how similar they were, but this treat wasn’t frozen! I have found that this is the perfect replacement for mint chocolate chip ice cream when it is too cold outside to eat ice cream and one of the best things that one can get at a holiday party.
Abbey Wu- Hot Chocolate
When the cold, winter air sets in, sharp enough to see your breath, hot chocolate is the treat I
crave above anything else. Although I love the powdered stuff that you can just dump in a mug, real hot chocolate is my favorite. The kind that is made slowly by stirring warm milk and dropping in chunks of chocolate that melt into something truly cozy and rich. After the delicious and velvety drink has been made, marshmallows are a must add. As I stir, I watch as they dissolve into creamy swirls. The best part, though, is the moment when you wrap your hands around the mug. The warmth from the burning hot liquid inside seeps into your fingers, and clouds of steam drift toward your face, thawing you from the inside out. From marshmallows to cinnamon to whipped cream and sprinkles, the versatility of hot chocolate is half the fun. The taste always varies slightly depending on how much chocolate I decide to add and what I top it off with. It’s sweet and homey, and is the perfect compliment to the chilly weather outside. To me, hot chocolate is more than a drink. It’s comfort packed into a mug.
Lily Antony- Gingerbread Cookies
My favorite holiday treat is gingerbread cookies. When I was a young child, I thought gingerbread was too much for me. I didn’t appreciate the complexities of the sweet ginger flavors. I was used to simple sugar cookies, so the added spice was new to me. Even with the overwhelming flavors, gingerbread was one of my favorite holiday treats because of how much fun it is to decorate and construct with them. Creating elaborate gingerbread houses was a yearly tradition for my great aunt and me. We would find new architectural styles to base our gingerbread house around. I still vividly remember when my family decided to stay at a beach house during winter break and made a gingerbread beach house. We tried to use cotton candy as clouds, and I remember waking up and seeing that it had all dissolved. We spent most of that morning laughing about that failure. The process of building a gingerbread house was a very difficult and teeth-grinding one, but even when it results in failure, I look back and feel so rewarded. However, even though I loved decorating gingerbread cookies, I still didn’t like their taste. That was until one late night when gingerbread cookies became my favorite holiday treat. I was stumbling around my kitchen looking for something sweet to snack on, and saw our little gingerbread house and people. My mom had been snacking on it, so I decided to snap some off and try it myself. I fell in love with the same spices that had deterred me from the cookie. From that day on, I would get some gingerbread cookies to eat along with the house and people we would decorate.
Paxton Tidrick- Plain Christmas Cookies
When the winter holidays roll around, I usually don’t enjoy it as much as I should. The snowy atmosphere is nice enough, but the red and white aesthetic is overwhelming, and I find Christmas decorations and media to be very over-the-top and boring after a while. But something that I’ve always looked forward to are plain, old Christmas cookies! Every year, my family and I make cookies of all different shapes (most notably Texas and longhorns, my mom is very proud of her heritage) and enjoy them both with and without frosting. But this year, we started a week or two earlier than we normally do, just because I was that excited about them! I suppose I’m still experiencing a sweet tooth as a result of Halloween. Modern Christmas cookies have been a thing since the 1500s, and I’d say we definitely perfected the formula. Something about the warm, sugary dough in the shape of a little, featureless man that’s getting eaten alive really makes me feel good inside, you know?
