Carbone Dolce

Here’s an easy way to remind the kids that they’ve been bad this year without scarring them for life. There’s a super-simple, traditional Italian dessert called Carbone Dolce, literally “sweet coal”, presumably a confectionary joke, but possibly pre-dating the whole stockings for bad kids thing. In any event, it could not be easier. You melt 400 grams of chocolate then mix in about half that in crushed Rice Crispies, form into coal-like clumps, and let cool. Voila! All the recipes I’ve come across are in Italian and I know they call for white chocolate, but I cannot figure out how or why you’d make something look like coal with white chocolate. Any ideas? Anyway, add a few pretzel sticks to the mix and you’ve got yer sticks and coal for the holidays. Better than pre-packaged, I’ll say.

Merry Christmas, dear readers!

Here’s the crew of Apollo 8 sending a Christmas Eve wish (Quicktime) to Earth as they orbited the moon, the first humans to do so, 36 years ago.