Today marks the last day of summer break for my kids. I’m going to miss their help making yummy treats throughout the day, like s’mores or chocolate zucchini cake, but that just means that I can have something waiting for them when they get home from school!
~ Chocolate Peanut Butter Reeses Cake at Good Things Catered
~ Baileys Cheesecake Brownies from Domestic Goddess in Trianing
~ End of the Search Chocolate Chip Cookies at Rachel Hearts Food
~ Superood Fudgesicles from Bitter Sweet
~ Chocolate and Hazelnut Truffles at Katiecakes
~ Dulce de Leche Cheesecake Squares from Annie’s Eats
~ Chocolate Zucchini Bread at 6 Bittersweets
~ …read more

This week’s chocolate links have a ton of yummy holiday treats and desserts. Did you get all of your holiday goodies made in time?

Chocolate Mint Bûche de Noël at Apple, Pie, Patis & Pate

French Yule Log at Use Real Butter

Easy Christmas Truffles at Shaved Ice Sundays

Red Velvet Yule Log at Big Red Kitchen

Martha’s chocolate chip cookies at Slow Like Honey

French Yule Log at Lemonpi

Dark Chocolate and Orange Tart at Kiss My Artichoke

Chocolate Banana Cake at Chowtimes

Chocolate Crackle Cookies at Butter and Sugar

Graham Cracker Toffee at Eat Boutique

Cookie Dough and Oreo Truffles at Good Eats ‘N Sweet Treats

Chocolate Covered …read more

This is fantastic: these guys decided that if you’re going to take a break, take a BIG break and while you’re at it, make it yourself!
They gathered 30 packages of Saisbury’s Luxury Belgian Milk Chocolate, 3 ScotBlok Chocolate Flavour Cake Coverings and 6 packages Loacker Quadratini chocolate wafers, and with the help of a wallpaper trough and a floor tile made a humongous Kit Kat bar!
The end product actually looks pretty tasty and you can see how proud they are of it too! Would you attempt something like this?
[image: sxc]

I found an awesome link over the weekend with instructions on how to make a single-serve chocolate cake in only five minutes using your microwave!
Five Minute Chocolate Cake
You’ll need:
4 Tablespoons cake flour
4 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons cocoa
1 Egg
3 Tablespoons milk
3 Tablespoons oil
1 Mug
Instructions:
Mix flour, sugar and cocoa. Spoon in 1 egg and pour in milk and oil, and mix well. Put in microwave for 3 minutes on maximum power (1000watt) and wait until it stops rising and sets in the mug. Tip contents out of mug onto saucer and enjoy!
Make sure you use cake flour – all purpose tends to …read more

How well do you know your candy bars? Well enough that you can identify them without a wrapper and from their insides only?
Check out the Candy Bar Identification Quiz to see how well you can do!
I scored 18 out of 20 – apparently it’s been too long since I’ve had an Oh! Henry, and I’ve never had a Chunky so I wasn’t able to identify it. How did you do?
Other quizzes that might make you feel hungry:
~ Candy Bar Quiz
~ Hershey’s Kiss Quiz
And check out what are considered the worst candies ever!
[original image: sxc]

This month, the writers around the Lifestyles channel were asked to show everyone the views from our windows. Some took a creative approach and painted a portrait with words and others share actual images of what we see on a day-to-day basis:
Mary Emma Allen at One Book Two Book shares a view from her window that entertains and delights her grandchildren. She also tells us how she was influenced by her mothers view from a kitchen window, as well as suggesting views for quilters.
Also at One Book Two Book, Karen shares the sweetest view of her kids playing on the …read more

Father’s Day is just around the corner and dads love chocolate too! A lot of the companies below offer expedited shipping, so if you’re just now realizing too that Father’s Day is only five days away, don’t panic!
See’s has a lot of great Father’s Day stuff this year. There’s the standard Seegar that’s been around for years, and they now have a Blue Ribbon Box filled with chocolate, a Father’s Day Scrapbook Box, and a Sports Dad Box.
Target has Good Fortune Father’s Day cookies, which are fortune cookies dipped in dark and white chocolate.
Father’s Day Milk Chocolate Bar Gift Box …read more

My favorite month of the year! Ok, not really – but any month that you get to celebrate with candy is a good one.
Emily’s Chocolates, which I’ve written about before, are also celebrating candy month and the start of summer with their yummy dark chocolate-covered berries – strawberry, blueberry, and cherry.
The strawberries – my favorite – are especially sweet and we all know how perfect strawberries and chocolate are together!
[image used with permission from Emily's Chocolates]

Flickr user Balakov has created a Wii remote set out of white chocolate!
He used the packaging from an actual Wii set as molds and put sponge cookies in the middle to help fill it out a bit. The kids and I could have a lot of fun with this, but only if I had a Wii Fit already waiting for me!

Everyone remembers the red dye cancer scare from the early 90’s and the subsequent bags of redless M&M’s or cans of cherry-less fruit cocktail.
It was found that large amounts of it caused cancer in lab rats, but as more research was done it was determined that small amounts of it were safe and the health risks were small, though certain uses are still banned today. Many manufacturers switched to a different red dye anyway.
However, a recent study has found that some dyes might be good for you and could actually protect against cancer!
A researcher in Oregon added aflatoxin …read more