As kids, my brother and I knew the holidays had truly arrived when our mom broke out the sanding sugars. A coating of these crunchy, brightly colored sugars made even her simplest sugar cookies take on a sparkly magic. Even now, I can't resist taking one of these from the cookie platter. Add some sparkle! Pick up a jar of sanding sugar for your holiday cookies. More

I love pecans. Love them. But somehow I forget about that fact for roughly 90% of the year, remembering only when a family member requests that I bring my favorite pecan pie for Thanksgiving. But then it's all pecans all the time...until I run out of my Thanksgiving pecan bulk buy. What do you do with your leftover pecans? More

I grew up with a health nut mom who served raisins to trick-or-treaters and insisted carob tasted as good as chocolate, so when she raved about an alternative sweetener called sucanat, I was a bit wary. Then I tasted her molasses spice cookies – one version made with refined white sugar and the other with sucanat. Sucanat won me over, and I've kept some in my own pantry ever since. More

I'm not sure if it's the family obligations or the frenzied pace that starts to settle in this time of the year, but I find myself reacting by grabbing onto any little thing I have control over. One such example is eating whatever I please for breakfast, occasionally chocolate. More

They call this "A Very Good Chocolate Cake." Well, they have lied (they being Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock, the quintessential Southern chefs). A more appropriate title would be, "The Very Best Chocolate Cake." A bold statement, yes, but once you try this moist, rich slice of heaven I think you might agree.

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Port is a sweet fortified wine made by adding a little brandy or other spirit to the wine during production. A good bottle of port still tastes like the original grape but is richer, rounder and sweeter. While it's most popular as an after dinner drink or a mellow aperitif, port can actually be wonderful to cook and bake with, too. More

Make room on the shelf, vanilla! We're kicking our holiday baking into high gear, and that means almond extract is about to get its time in the spotlight. We love the warm, nutty flavor that a drop of this extract adds to our muffins and cookies. When almond aromas fill the house, we know we've got something good going on. More

On one of my very first forays into journalism, I was tasked with interviewing some local Atlanta lifestyle celebrities about comfort foods and one interview in particular has stuck with me. This week it once again popped into my mind giving me the ideal drink idea for our 10- Minute Happy Hour. More