Chocolate recipes

Rocky road dessert pizza with a brown sugar cookie crust, melted chocolate, puffed marshmallows, and chopped peanuts drizzled with more chocolate. A fun holiday treat.

Fudge nut brownies with a cream cheese-chocolate filling sandwiched between a buttery cookie crust. Loaded with walnuts and semi-sweet chocolate. Freezer-friendly.

Low-fat cocoa almond biscotti made with egg substitute and chocolate syrup instead of butter. Crisp, twice-baked Italian cookies with deep chocolate and almond flavor.

Texas-shaped peanut butter star cookies with peanut halves at the points and melted chocolate writing on top. A Country Living roll-out cookie for Lone Star themed parties.

Giant oatmeal chocolate chip cookies loaded with a full 24 ounces of chips, grated Hershey bar, and optional nuts. A massive batch recipe rolled golf ball-sized for thick, chewy cookies.

Loaded oatmeal cookies with whole wheat flour, coconut, pecans, chocolate chips, and butterscotch chips. Vanilla pudding mix is the secret to extra-soft cookies.

No-bake eggnog cheesecake with a chocolate pirouette cookie and graham cracker crust. Cream cheese, French vanilla pudding, rum, and nutmeg set into a chilled holiday showstopper.

I recently came across another way to use up some of those cartons of oats and bags of bran spilling out of my pantry. Brandi of Bran Appetit posted an intriguing recipe for Brandi's Cookie Bars. I used her recipe with a few changes to make cookie bars of my own. Please visit Brandi's blog for the original recipe. And if you're a fan of oatmeal cookies and chocolate, make these now! Oatmeal-Bran Cookie Bars (adapted from Bran Appetit)

An intensely dark chocolate sheet cake made with strong black coffee and buttermilk, topped with a rich "Hundred Dollar Frosting" of melted chocolate, butter, walnuts, and a surprising touch of lemon juice.

Mole de guajolote is a traditional Mexican turkey in mole sauce made from scratch with ancho, mulato, and pasilla chilies, chocolate, sesame seeds, peanuts, and warm spices.

Graham wafer delights with a cooked date and brown sugar filling sandwiched between graham crackers. A no-bake layered dessert bar topped with chocolate icing.

Choco oatmeal peanut butter dreams bake chewy peanut butter oat cookies, then top each with melted chocolate and chopped peanuts. A 3-flavor cookie ready in 40 minutes.

Kahlua fudge brownies with unsweetened chocolate, walnuts, and a double hit of coffee liqueur baked in and brushed on top. Dense, boozy, intensely chocolate.

Nesselrode pudding pie with a rum-spiked custard, whipped egg whites, and Nesselrode mix set in a pie shell and topped with chocolate shavings. A classic, elegant chilled holiday dessert.

Peanut butter cheese pie with a hidden chocolate ganache layer at the bottom of a graham cracker crust, topped with marbled peanut butter cream cheese filling and real whipped cream swirls.

Pistachio-almond biscotti drizzled with dark chocolate: crunchy, twice-baked Italian cookies packed with two kinds of nuts. Coffee's best friend and a gift-tin classic.