For the four Sundays of Advent, I made a sweet treat for Robert: hot chocolate mix, self-saucing lemon cake, white chocolate mix, and brownies. December is definitely dessert month in our house, and we’ve increased the number of workouts to try to balance the robust dessert menu.

Hot Chocolate Recipe

This is the second time that I have tried a homemade hot chocolate mix, and I was very happy with the results from this recipe by Mel’s Kitchen! I am not a food processor person, so I used a French chef’s knife to cut up the white chocolate chips. It wasn’t fast, but it was doable. The mix turned out great, and the resident hot chocolate lover was very happy.

There are several plant-based powdered milk options to experiment with: check out Dairy & Non-Dairy Milk Powders – Anthonys Goods.

Reindeer Mix (White chocolate mix)

This white chocolate-covered snack mix has many names, and I’m linking the recipe from Butter With A Side of Bread that I used as a starting point to try to re-create the mix I’ve had in the past: White Chocolate Chex Mix – Butter With a Side of Bread

I used Heritage Flakes cereal in place of the Cheerios, along with wheat, corn, and rice Chex. I love pretzel snaps and used mixed nuts in place of the more traditional peanuts. (I used a combination of unsalted and salted mixed nuts.) I did use dried cranberries and would have added chopped dates if I had them. In the past, I’ve added mint M&Ms, but I had the hardest time finding them this year. I used melting chocolate wafers for the white chocolate mix. I think it works well, but you can also use chocolate chips and add some coconut oil. This mix is downright addictive and definitely a family favorite.

I mentioned the self-saucing cake in the November 2025 newsletter and first made these vegan brownies last year. I continue to be amazed that you can mix aquafaba (chickpea juice) and cream of tartar, and get an egg replacer or the start to an egg-free meringue!

It’s Soup Season

Sometimes, we make soup with the ingredients we have. This month, we had an abundance of carrots and potatoes, so we made Pamela Anderson’s Anti-Inflammatory Lentil Soup Recipe.

We also made this Brothy Carrot Butter Bean Soup from Munching with Mariyah. This yummy soup has French onion soup vibes.

Tofu Time!

You may have figured out that tofu recipes are my jam, and we tried two new ones this month:

We made this Crispy Orange Tofu from Nora Cooks. Nora is one of my favorites, and this was a restaurant-quality dish. For this recipe, I employed a tip from Nisha Vora of My Rainbow Plant Life: take the tofu out of the package and put it into a freezer-safe container along with the water that’s in the tofu package. Stick it in the freezer (I did mine overnight), and take it out the next day to thaw before using in your recipe. The freezing changes the texture of the tofu. It makes it chewier. It’s kind of weird for vegetarians to call something meaty, but it has a different texture that works well for recipes like this one.

We also made this Mango Chickpea Salad from Plant Based RD using shredded high-protein tofu, another serious change of pace from the typical tofu texture. I’ve been on a high-protein kick—and we needed that to balance out dessert!

This was my first time making sweet chili sauce and hoisin sauce from scratch, and they both turned out great! I didn’t have dates or date paste, so I used raisins, one of the suggested substitutions.

Photo by Crystal Tubens on Unsplash