That’s right: s’mores in December. My inspiration for this confection came from a holiday special called Gingerbread S’More Boys, made by Two Hearts Bakery in San Francisco for Williams-Sonoma online. I’ve never actually tasted the Two Hearts Bakery variety, but was excited to try my hand at whipping up a kitchen made version of my own.

I wanted to put together a few words on the use of butter in baking: why it’s better than margarine, how it can actually be good for you, what kinds to use, how to store it, and how to bake with it. It seems that a few words have turned into many, and despite a temptation to edit it down, I’ve been indulgent and left it all on the page for you to absorb because, hey, it’s butter, one of the cornerstone ingredients of baking.

Alright, we are now full-swing into a somewhat manic phase of holiday baking. And no plate of Christmas treats would be complete without gingerbread cookies. I was thinking outside the gingerbread “man” cookie cutter… I have instead been inspired by my recent immigration to the twitterverse and opted for “gingerbread tweets” in the shape of twittering birds (and other shapes, too).  This gingerbread cookie recipe is a spicy variation with the standard ground ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves, and adds a little extra edge with a subtle dash of piquant cayenne pepper.

These lovely confections — which happen to be my father’s favorite Christmas cookie — go by many names: thumbprint cookies, Swedish tea cakes, and bird’s nest cookies, to name a few. But whatever moniker you give them, you will surely call them delicious.

I don’t know about you, but thanks to the fast food nation we now live in and the proficient marketing of processed food, when I hear the word “breadsticks,” unfortunately my mind conjures up thoughts of greasy, doughy, bloated blocks of bread sandwiched together in a pizza box, served with a side of one or another variety of mysterious dipping sauce. Or the one of a billion, store-bought, frozen, oven-ready breadsticks — akin to the upscale breadstick that you might expect to find at the average pasta franchise — which, although quick and easy, are quite generic and filled with preservatives and artificial flavors.

When I think Christmas cookies, I think ginger crackles.

Oh, of course there are shortbread, sugar and gingerbread (wo)men cookies, too. Not to mention Swedish tea cakes… but ginger crackles are one of a few cookies that I only make during the holiday season. There’s something about their chewy, gingery bite, their crackled top and sugary sparkle, and the warmly fragrant aroma that fills the house when ginger crackles are in the oven — it just feels like the holidays.

Okay, so I had to use up the last of a seemingly endless supply of pumpkin puree, created from one modest “pie” pumpkin, one soft pear, and half of very ripe banana. Yet another case of necessity giving rise to invention; and muffins seemed like just the ticket to fill the order: portable, moist, healthy and flavor-packed.