I absolutely love baking – especially around the holidays. It’s been a tradition for as long as I can remember to bake up batches of cookie after cookie to fill in tins to gift to family and friends. This year has been much too busy for any of that, but I did get to do a little bit of baking thanks to American Heritage Chocolate.
American Heritage Chocolate is unlike many other chocolate brands on the market. Their chocolate is made from a historic recipe containing only ingredients that were available in the 1750’s. It’s one of a kind flavor is mildly spicy, but slightly sweet as well. Cinnamon, nutmeg, chili pepper, orange, anise and vanilla are some of the spices that were available in colonial times and American Heritage Chocolate is still made from that same decadent blend of spices. You might also be happy to learn that their chocolate is Kosher, contains all natural ingredients and doesn’t contain any preservatives.
American Heritage Chocolate was created by Mars Chocolate North America and is an authentic historic recipe. You can find chocolate history demonstrations and also purchase it at over 130 living history museums across the US and Canada.
I’d like to take a quick moment to share with you some fun chocolate facts from throughout history.
- In 1500 BCE stories of the origin of chocolate were included in religious prophecies of Olmec, Mayan, Toltec and Aztec cultures.
- Christopher Columbus was the first European to write about cocoa beans in 1502 CE
- A public house in Boston sold chocolate produced in Europe in 1670.
- The Milky Way bar was produced in 1923 by Frank and Forrest Mars Sr.
Now I’ve never baked with this type of chocolate before, so it took me a minute to decide what to make. After careful contemplation, I thought a cookie to be paired with hot cocoa or coffee would be perfect for this time of year. I gathered all of my ingredients and set out to make Festive Holiday Blondies, with my personal twist. I’m no cooking show pro, so this is what my kitchen looks like during the process of baking, while my dough is chilling in the refrigerator! Don’t worry, I cleaned it all up right away – but what a mess!
I’ve shared the recipe below, but wanted to also share the step of dropping spoonfuls onto your cookie sheet. Once I dropped the cookies, I sprinkled red and green sugars over the balls of dough so they would have a festive holiday look to them.
This is what the cookies will look like when done – beautiful!
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 cups packed light brown sugar
- 1 cup butter, softened
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1 cup coarsely chopped chocolate
- 1/2 cup coarsely chopped butterscotch chips
- 1 cup toasted walnuts
- Red and Green holiday sugars
