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 Cherry Cookies at Lovin’ From the Oven

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 make it way too dense and thick. A few drops of real vanilla extract also gives it an authentic “cake taste!” Serve with chocolate syrup, whipped cream, fresh fruit, and/or ice cream.

[image: sxc]

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 deck and how the two youngsters deal with the heat.

Linette, one of our resident super bloggers is sharing views on three blogs. The first is a beautiful view of her back yard that she’s sharing on She Knows Parties. Next, on Robust Cooking she shares a photo of her window herb garden. Last, on Mother Earth’s Garden she shares a beautiful view from her front porch.

Sandy at All Holiday Cafe shares the view of her garden, a perfect backdrop for any summer holiday.

Marye at Baking Delights shares details of some of her favorite views throughout time and from some of her favorite windows in her massive farmhouse where she lives now.Check out the veggie garden she has in her front yard.

Another of our super bloggers, Heather, shares her view while enjoying everyone’s favorite topic - Chocolate at Chocolate Bytes.  She’s also a very brave mother taking on a topic like chocolate while being a mom to twins when she shares the view from the twins’ window at Inside Motherhood.And what would an animal lover be without sharing their pets favorite view? Heather shares her cat’s view at The Food Bowl.

Susan at Play Library shares a view from her car window as she and her husband go out to dinner for their anniversary.

Trench - our resident Superhero on who spends his time tracking down crime both on the internet at My Crime Space and crimes of passion in the real world at Psycho for Love shares a figurative view of what life looks like from his windows.

Marcie at A Child Chosen shares a glimpse through the “types” of windows in her life as an international adoptive mother and more.

Cyndi from Layers Upon Layers shares the breathtaking view from her front porch in New England.

Peggy at Junk Creation shares an adorable image of Goslings on Parade as they waddle their way by Peggy’s window.

Our newest Lifestyles member Rachel comes on board her first channel carnival with an adorable detailed view of her new window with her fur baby, Louie.

Lastly, but certainly not least, Gayla shares a beautiful sunset in rural Indiana as it rests on full display behind the farm across the road on MomGadget.

[image: sxc]

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 are from World’s Finest Chocolate and are chocolate bars wrapped in “Happy Father’s Day” wrappers and be personalized further for free!

Chocolate.com is offering a Happy Father’s Day Chocolate Chip Cheesecake that looks amazing!

By Nature (UK) has natural and organic chocolates and is featuring a chunky Father’s Day slab.

Phillips Candy has put together a Boston Red Sox Bucket that contains milk chocolate baseballs, freshly baked Phillips Chocolate Chip cookies, “ballpark” popcorn - and peanuts drizzled with chocolate, a Red Sox tumbler, temporary Red Sox tattoos & pencils and an adorable plush baseball.

You can find a bunch of Molded Chocolate Father’s Day gifts from The Chocolate Vault!

VirtualChocolate.com has a ton of chocolate-themed e-cards for dad, too, just in case you can’t get something else to him in time!

[image: see's product photo]

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 (a highly toxic carcinogenic) with and without the dye to food pellets that were given to trout. Nine months later she found that those who were given the aflatoxin with the dyes had 50% fewer liver tumors, 50% lower incidence of stomach cancer and a 40% lower incidence of liver cancer compared with those that had been exposed to just the aflatoxin alone.

Obviously a lot more research needs to be done, but it sounds like an interesting breakthrough! What do you think?

Adrith has picked her winners for the Pampered Chef Season’s Best recipe booklets giveaway from last week!

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Hi everyone!

I had my husband draw names from a hat this morning, and am happy to announce that Phoebe and Christine Smith have each won a copy of the Winter edition of Season’s Best. Congratulations!

Thank you to everyone who participated - and to Heather for letting me guest blog for Chocolate Bytes. It’s been fun!

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Thank you, Adrith!

[image via Adrith]