Whether you’re just starting your winter baking season or have already churned out dozens of cookies, no doubt holiday treats are on your mind. My family’s favorite Christmas cookies—Vanilla Bean Cookies and Chocolate Rum Balls—sit for several weeks to age, so my holiday baking traditionally starts the weekend after Thanksgiving. But when I need a last-minute batch for a cookie exchange or solstice party, my favorite upgrade for any cookie is the ganache recipe I share this week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon.

Ganache is simply the French word for a mixture of chocolate and cream, but these two ingredients can take on so many textures depending on ratio and temperature. The ganache I make to drizzle over cookies flows easily for a chocolate glaze. The more it cools, the firmer it becomes, letting you also use it like a sauce, frosting, and firm candy truffles. Even outside the holiday season, this easy and versatile dessert upgrade should be part of your baking skillset.

Learn more about using chocolate as a glaze or filling and get the complete recipe for ganache in my column.

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Twice as Tasty

Once you make ganache, use it simply as chocolate sauce over ice cream or fresh or grilled fruit. When cooled until its spreadable, the creamy chocolate can coat slices of a sweet bread like Zucchini Bread with Sesame Seeds. If you stored it in the fridge, stir a rock-hard spoonful into a cup of hot coffee until it dissolves.

Warm ganache pours on so smoothly that I use it to glaze layered Chocolate Pudding Cake. To make this easy, stack a rimmed baking sheet, wire rack, and parchment sheet and set the two-layer cake on top. Pour the ganache evenly over the cake’s top, letting it roll down the sides onto the parchment. Use a clean table knife or spatula to gently scoop the ganache from the parchment up onto the cake’s sides. Let the ganache sit until slightly hardened before moving it off the parchment and decorating further.

As you glaze a cake, any ganache that drips down to the tray can be scooped up and reused. For the ultimate chocolaty cake, let some of the ganache cool until it can be piped and use it as a filling between cake layers and a decorative topping for the glazed surface.

To decorate cookies, let freshly made ganache cool just as you would for a cake glaze, about 15 minutes, and then drizzle it on the baked and cooled batch. Suddenly, everyday cookies look extraordinary.

Here are just a few of the cookie recipes on the blog that I give a ganache upgrade so that they stand out on a party tray. You can find more in the recipe index.

• Chocolate–Sour Cream Cookies
• Pumpkin–Chocolate Cookies
• Old-Fashioned Gingerbread Cookies
• Smoky Oatmeal–Cranberry Cookies

Make a batch of this Biscotti Master Recipe or Improv Shortbread Cookies, and you can mix and match not only the flavors but also the presentation, drizzling ganache over some and for others, dipping one cookie end in the chocolate sauce. In next week’s column, I take lunchbox peanut butter cookies and use ganache to transform them into holiday thumbprints.

Want more Twice as Tasty recipes? Get my books! Click here to order a personally signed, packaged, and shipped copy of The Complete Guide to Pickling directly from me. I also share tasty ways to use pickles in The Pickled Picnic; it’s only available here.