Ginger Snaps and Chocolate Buttercrunch Toffee

For today's holiday party at work, I made ginger snaps from Room for Dessert and Chocolate Buttercrunch Toffee from David Lebovitz's class last week. The ginger snaps had a great spicy bite, with cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and black pepper. The toffee was interesting because you have to heat the sugar with butter to 300 degrees F, the "hard crack" stage. Once the toffee gets to that stage, you pour it over chopped toasted nuts and then cover it with chocolate chips, which melt from the heat of the toffee. More nuts (I went with hazelnuts for this batch), and voila. Thanks to my friend Alex for helping out with the pictures and grinding the black pepper.