National Bittersweet Chocolate Day - January 10th

Celebrate bittersweet chocolate on January 10th! Since bittersweet (sweetened dark chocolate, containing no milk solids) contains antioxidants, having some daily is pretty good for you. To better understand the differences between the various kinds of chocolate, Enjoy Dark Chocolate does a great job explaining it. Semi-sweet and bittersweet are somewhat interchangeably used; both must contain 35% cocoa solids, but since there are no regulations on how much sugar semi-sweet must contain, "the distinction is somewhat arbitrary."

My favorite way to enjoy semi-sweet chocolate is in chocolate chip cookies. Or maybe any number of dark chocolate truffles, like Wicked Chocolate's Dark Chocolate Caramel Sea Salt, or their Strawberry Cheesecake.

To make ordinary chocolate chip cookies more holiday festive, add food coloring to the dough before you add the flour. To make these for my daughter this past Christmas, I divided the dough and added green to half, and red to the other, and used my cookie scoop (a small version of an ice cream scoop) to dip into both bowls of dough, then baking as usual. I used liquid food color, but gel would probably work better to get bright colors.

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