IT’S here: the holiday sugar rush. Thanksgiving is over, but the chocolate turkeys are still hanging around my house. I insisted the Halloween candy be thrown out (house rules), but already gingerbread men are showing up at the office.

Now that the season begins on Halloween and barrels straight through to New Year’s Eve, a solid two-month binge on sweets is the new normal. By Christmas, I’ll be nursing a Grinch-like grudge against candy canes.

So when my colleague Kim Severson claimed that she had an irresistible formula for hot fudge sauce and a sweet-and-spicy pecan recipe, I rubbed my hands together with dark glee. It seemed to me that, what with all the extra activities in and out of the kitchen, the last thing people want at this time of year is the fixings for a hot fudge sundae, and the first thing they want is real food.

I knew that Severson was going to go sweet. She tends to take on the tastes of where she lives (when she was in the Bay Area, she was all about leafy greens and pho), and now that she lives in the South, her sweet tooth has run amok.