Culinary Adventures with Camilla

Welcome to the second  ImprovCooking Challenge  of 2017. This group is now headed up by Nichole of  Cookaholic Wife . The idea behind Improv Cooking Challenge: we are assigned two ingredients and are challenged to create a recipe with those two things.  This month's items: chocolate and chiles. I considered a lot of different things from spiced truffles to chile-flecked chocolate cremeux. But, in the end, the boys reminded me of a chocolate drink we made when I taught a six-week elective class at their school about chocolate! We had read a book about the Mayans. The Mayans made  chocol haa ; the Aztecs, after they conquered the Mayans, made  xocolatl.  Xocolatl  comes from the Aztec language,  xococ  meaning sour or bitter, and  atl  meaning water or drink.  Bitter water.  That's a far cry from our modern day, milky hot chocolate drinks. And since we remembered not really liking xocolatl ,...

In an effort to make all of my holiday gifts this year, I invited some of my favorite foodie bloggers to share recipes for hand-crated edibles. Over the course of the next twelve weeks, we'll be sharing recipes from homemade spice blends (last week's theme) to charcuterie trays and everything in between. Hope you'll follow along for inspiration. You can find out more information, including the schedule:  here . This week, we're sharing our favorite special diets creations. They might be gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, or sugar-free. Thanks to these gals and their Special Diets Creations! Amy's Cooking Adventures   bakes some  Gluten-Free Vegan Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookie Bites Sarah of  Fantastical Sharing of Recipes  blends up her  Maple Cream (Gluten Free) Rebekah from  Making Miracles  offers a Dairy-Free, Soy-Free Pumpkin Pie Culinary Adventures with Camilla  is whisking together a  Dairy-Free Aztec ...