" Around the room, the traditional thirteen desserts of Christmas are stacked on glass dishes like pirates' treasure, gleaming and lustrous in topaz and gold. Black nougat for the devil, white nougat for the angels, and clementines, grapes, figs, almonds, honey, dates, apples, pears, quince jelly, mendiants all jeweled with raisins and peel, and fougasse made with olive oil and split like a wheel into twelve parts-
And of course there is the chocolate- the Yule log cooling in the kitchen; the nougatines, the celestines, the chocolate truffles piled onto the counter in a fragrant scatter of cocoa dust. "

― Joanne Harris , The Girl with No Shadow (Chocolat, #2)