A Dozen For Dinner: late night wine and dessert

We celebrated our family Christmas early as part of our family would be traveling this year and gone over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Our usual routine has been for the kids to visit their paternal grandparents and my parents on Christmas Eve fitting in visits to both places. We would have our stockings, presents and brunch on Christmas Day morning.

This year all of the kids arrived in the evening on Friday and without multiple commitments we were able to spend the evening together. I had made two desserts and served small portions of each.

With dessert we sampled this bottle of Chianti that was bottled at the winery that the girls and I visited in Italy last year.

The first dessert was a bittersweet chocolate tart in a cracker crust with a whipped vanilla Marscapone cheese topping made with homemade Marscapone cheese.

chocolate truffle tart with marscarpone filling

The second dessert was a chocolate pecan torte. Four thin layers of chocolate cake filled with chocolate frosting between the layers and a rich chocolate glaze on top. The frosting covers the sides of the torte and pecans are pressed into the frosting.