This year, take a break from the usual Christmas cookies and fruit cake, and give your friends the gift of chocolate. Once you master the art of melting chocolate, the choices are endless. Your holiday will be very merry and bright filled with chocolate covered stuff.

So, to get started on my chocolate covered stuff, I am going to go ahead and melt some chocolate. I have got a block of semi-sweet chocolate but I am cutting to sort of facilitate the whole melting of everything. If you want to speed demon through this step, you can start with chips. I am going to put my chocolate on a double boiler setup. I have a pot filled with about an inch of water that I am setting my bowl on. This gently melts my chocolate. We want to do so, ever so gently, it doesn't like being cooked violently. I am going to go ahead and give this a stir.

My chocolate is just about all the way melted. I am going to take it off the double boiler. I am going to give it another couple of stirs just to make sure it's nice and smooth and I am going to start to make chocolate covered stuff. What stuff? Anything you want. I have got some pretzels, some crystallized ginger, wafer cookies, biscotti, some big pretzels, little pretzels, we are crazy with pretzels.

So, let's go ahead and give these guys a little dippity dew. Alright, nicey, nicey and let's just give it a little dippity dew and the little sprinky dinks here. Green and red and how about some little guys, little guys, and how about, let's go in the candy canes.

Alright, look at that, I am laying them on some parchment paper to let the chocolate harden up and then I am going to pack them up and take it with me and I am going to be the hit of the party.