17th Annual Christmas Party Report

For most of you, Sisters and Brothers, this will be the second time you've heard about your Chocolate Priestess's annual tradition of hosting a huge Christmas/Holiday party.  The first mention was last week when I talked about how I was incorporating Chocolate and our Path into the party planning.  Today I want to share how that went with you and later I'll be reviewing the actual chocolate treats I made and the recipes or products I used to make them.  I've all ready looked a the Tollhouse refrigerator cookies which you can see in some of our pictures.

All our hot foods and drinks were set out in the kitchen area which my friends all tell me is a "huge kitchen" but I find less than ideal in many circumstances as last night proved to me again.  A few folks just ignored the main and secondary courses and moved to dessert but I made sure to give them the full tour and most guests came hungry.  In total, my family of three hosted 26 other adults over the course of the evening.

The treats, including all of the chocolate ones, we laid out on the dining room table and a card table.  We covered them in two of our many Christmas and winter themed tablecloths.  I'll start with the card table and more southward.  The green things are vanilla cupcakes topped by a single fair trade, organic, dark chocolate orange flower which Taraluna sent me for Halloween.  See, I told you, Sisters and Brothers that I'd be reusing left over candies.  Between two of the cupcakes were some of the three types of refrigerator Tollhouse cookies I baked.  Below the cupcakes, some of my chocolate caramels lined two cookie trays.  On the left we see the "chewy treats" the White Chocolate Acolyte made -- no chocolate in them.  On the right we see two cookies I made.  Plain simple sugar cookies topped with squares of Spokandy mints and then shortbread cookies topped with white chocolate.

The north end of the big table had three platters of various sizes.  You can see the chocolate caramels again on the black platter along with more Tollhouse cookies.  On the left side you can see the dipped medium pretzels.  The chocolate ones are left from Asher's while the Milk Chocolate Acolyte dipped  the white ones and then decorated them with colored sugars and sprinkles.  The more oddly shaped tray had more pretzels, star shaped chocolate chocolate shortbread cookies and peanut clusters.

The south side of the big table had the rest of our treat including this cheese, meat, and cracker platter.  The clear tray north of it had more peanut clusters and what are supposed to be chocolate crackles but when I review that cookbook we'll talk about what happened there.  The red lipped tray had more Asher's pretzels, the "crackles" and chocolate caramels.  All in all a lot of to look at and chose from. I think my assistant, Tim, for helping me set everything out in as nice a fashion as we could.

In all I had 12 containers of treat for this party but by the end I had 4 containers worth left.  And yet I don't think I overfed my guests.  First, once we moved to the basement, we were all fairly busy and no one really returned upstairs to where the food was until it was time to leave.  Some of them used the provided plastic bags to pack up some food but each bag only held so much.  Plus most of the guest had soup, hamloaf, mac & cheese, carrots, corn, other food first which curbed their appetites. 

Over all I think it was a success and I am pleased.  I'm also very glad we only do something this big once a year.

Sisters and Brothers, may you too take the time to slowly appreciate what the Divine and human ingenuity have offered you in chocolate.