Scroll to the bottom of the post to get ALL the “12 Days” recipes from 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022!

Welcome to Day 1 of

The Twelve Days of Holiday Treats!

Once again, this year, from December 1st-12th I’ll post a new holiday treat recipe every day – inspiration for your holiday entertaining!

The recipes I’m sharing are small-er batch – each recipe makes 1-dozen or a few more smaller-sized treats that are simple to prepare and that use everyday ingredients and equipment so hopefully you’ll be able to whip up any of these on a whim. Check out the treats from 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 at the bottom of this post too for more inspiration!

I haven’t done any recipe development for a VERY long time but figured the “12 Days” was a good place to start. Small-batch, easy recipes are what I need in MY life right now and hopefully, you do as well! I have been working on these for weeks – my capacity for doing #allthethings is a bit reduced right now but I’ve enjoyed working with these 12 recipes (as have my neighbours who have been taste-testers!).

I’m starting with the EASIEST recipe ever! I call them Chocolate Freckles or Speckles. Maybe you know them as nonpareils? Or maybe you are new to this brilliant concept – if so, welcome! (I’ve written about these before, a few years ago, so here’s a refresher!).

What are chocolate freckles/ speckles?

Basically, it’s a two-ingredient wonder:

Chocolate (I prefer milk or a mixture of milk and semi-sweet for these) – make it GOOD QUALITY (when there are so few ingredients it makes a big difference!).
Hundreds & thousands (you may know these as “sprinkles” but for me, sprinkles are what you might know as “jimmies” – the vocabulary of baking is complicated). In Australia it’s gotta be the Dollar Sweets brand for me! Here in Canada, Sweetapolita do the best!

(see!)

A brief history

I grew up eating these sweets in Australia, made by Allen’s (owned by Nestlé) who call them “Freckles” but a favourite chocolate store of mine, Haigh’s Chocolates (est. 1915 in Adelaide) makes their own (superior) version dubbed “Speckles” (yah, you don’t want to mess with Nestlé by calling your product the same as theirs like this small brand did, leaving them scrambling).

Whether you call them speckles, freckles, nonpareils, rainbow chocolate buds, or whatever, in my house, these are known as “goners” (as in, make them and they’re gone because you eat them so fast LOL!).

Making your own chocolate freckles/ speckles – what you need:

The shape/ size. I did a little thinking and research and decided the best way to get the size/ shape of the chocolate would be mini cupcake liners (or “patty pans” as we call them in Australia), but the first few I tried, the chocolate stuck. I found some “greaseproof” mini cupcake liners though that did the trick (and I can re-use them for this purpose a few times I would think).
The chocolate. It’s important since there are so few ingredients, to use EXCELLENT quality chocolate. I used a mix of Callebaut Milk and Dark and while Haigh’s uses their own bean-to-bar chocolate, this version of mine tasted remarkably close (the Haigh’s chocolate is really divine).
A tray big enough for them to chill on. Or two. A couple of quarter sheet pans worked well here because they are small enough to fit in the fridge (as opposed to a larger tray).

“Tempering” the chocolate

Making tempered chocolate isn’t something many home bakers might want to take the time with (it’s a bit fussy and needs a candy thermometer). I’ve found an easy way to achieve a nicely smooth (albeit not “tempered”) chocolate is to melt approximately 3/4 of the chocolate and then add the rest (this cools the temperature of the already melted chocolate, mimicking a small part of the tempering process but not fully). For this recipe, it works fine!

Again, it feels silly to write a “recipe” for these so this is more of a “how to”:

Yield: approx 50

Holiday Speckles/ Freckles

Easy homemade chocolate freckles/ speckles: Milk chocolate buds with rainbow sprinkles (hundreds & thousands)

Prep Time 15 minutes

Additional Time 30 minutes

Total Time 45 minutes

Difficulty Easy

Materials

approx 1 1/2 cups (300g) chocolate chips (I used a combination of milk and semi-sweet)
50 mini cupcake liners
holiday coloured hundreds & thousands (nonpareils)

Tools

microwave-safe bowl for melting chocolate OR metal bowl and small pot for stovetop method
2 x quarter sheet pans
1 teaspoon measure

Instructions

Melt the chocolate (stovetop method)

Place 3/4 of the chocolate in a metal or ceramic bowl set over a pot of simmering water.
When the chocolate is just melted, carefully remove the bowl from the simmering pot, add the remaining chocolate, and continue to stir until all the chocolate is melted.

Melt the chocolate (microwave method)

Place 3/4 of the chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl and heat at 50-60% power in bursts of 1 minute until the chocolate is just about melted.
Carefully remove the bowl from the microwave, add the remaining chocolate, and continue to stir until all the chocolate is melted.

Assemble the speckles/ freckles

Place approximately 50 cupcake liners on two quarter sheet pan trays.
Pour approx. 1 teaspoon of chocolate in the bottom of each cupcake liner. Once you have filled a tray's worth, gently tap the tray to even the chocolate across the bottom of the cupcake liners.
Sprinkle the top of the chocolate with the 100s & 1000s. Make sure to completely cover the chocolate.
Chill in the fridge until the chocolate has hardened.
Gently shake the loose sprinkles into a small dish (you can reuse these).
Remove the chocolates from the cupcake liners and store in an airtight container in the fridge. These will last a long time in the fridge (in theory but you'll most likely eat them up!

Notes

If you're in Canada, the SWEETAPOLITA holiday nonpareils are the best!

Recommended Products

As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Aren’t they the most adorable? Better yet, they are easy to make a lot of and they package up beautifully – perfect for gift-giving!

Or, I mean, you could just make a batch and snack on them yourself (ahem….).

Come back tomorrow for Day 2 of the 12 Days of Holiday Treats and scroll down for all the treats from 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022!

Baking up a storm this holiday season? Click over to Sweetapolita! Get 15% off with the code EATLIVTRAVWRITE !

Baking up a storm this holiday season? Click over to Nuts.com!

(this is an affiliate link, but I genuinely use Nuts.com products and love them. Highly recommended if you are in the US/ Canada where they currently ship)

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Please note: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. This post also contains affiliate links for Nuts. com and Sweetapolita (both companies I genuinely love!). This means that if you click over and purchase something, I will receive a very small percentage of the purchase price (at no extra cost to you). Thank you in advance!
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1 thought on “12 Days of Holiday Treats: Holiday Speckles”

Geoff

December 1, 2023 at 17:54

Yes, I remember. You were always a sucker for these. But, with good chocolate, they are very nice.