Chocolate fantasy

 

Image from Freepik.

I’m an addict. I admit it. A chocoholic, although not just any chocolate will do. I crave the dark, heavy kind, though some bars with 70 or 80% cacao are too bitter for me.  My late, ex-mother-in-law always used to say to me after a meal, “Judy, dear, a little sweet with my coffee.” Now I’m completely on her team. I want a sweet after lunch and dinner, but it’s almost always has to be chocolate. I buy salted caramels and dark chocolate bonbons with caramel ice cream and truffles and —oh great splurge!—sometimes a mini Dove bar. I crave the mini-chocolate chip cones from Trader Joe’s. My Christmas stocking is always full to the top with chocolate—bars, chocolate oranges, you name it. Santa has gotten the memo about me and chocolate. I am appalled when someone says to me, “I don’t really like chocolate.” It’s un-American.

Imagine my delight when prowling through my old recipes, many inherited from my mom, that I found a recipe for brownie pudding. You may remember it as the recipe that puts dry ingredients on the bottom and liquid on the top, and when it’s baked, they reverse, and it comes out with chocolate cake over a rich and dark and wonderful chocolate sauce. It was one of my favorites growing up, and one of the earliest things I learned to cook. I think you could double this recipe and make it in a 9 x13 pan, but I haven’t tried it recently.

Brownie Pudding

Ingredients

1 cup sugar, divided

½ cup cocoa powder, unsweetened, divided

1 cup all-purpose, unbleached flour

2 tsp. baking powder

¼ tsp. salt

½ cup mlk

4 Tbsp butter, melted

1 large egg, lightly beaten

1-1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup hot coffee or water

Vanilla ice cream

Grease an 8 x 8 baking pan with cooking spray. Pre-heat oven to 350^o

Combine ½ cup sugar and ¼ cup cocoa powder and set aside.

Stir together remaining sugar and cocoa powder, flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix thoroughly, and then make a well in the center of the dry ingredients. Add butter, egg, vanilla, and milk and stir to mix. Spread the batter in the greased pan. Sprinkle reserved cocoa/sugar mixture evenly over batter. Pour the hot coffee (or water—but coffee gives a much more robust flavor) over batter. Do not stir.

Bake 35-40 minutes. Surface of cake should appear cracked. Let sit and collect itself for 15 minutes. Serve topped with dollop of ice cream.

Toffee bars

Some of my favorite recipes come not from my mom but from a wonderful friend who was maybe a decade younger than mom. Reva Ogilvie, a multi-talented woman and a doctor’s wife, grew up in a small farm community in northeast Missouri and like so many girls from that area, married a student from the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine, as did I. By the time I knew them, Uncle Charles and Aunt Reva had a guest ranch in East Texas. Somehow, they adopted my children and me, and we spent many happy weekends at the ranch. Aunt Reva’s cooking was a highlight. This recipe has all the elements of chocolate chip cookies but rearranged. Over the years, I’ve served it at many a Christmas party.

Ingredients

½ lb. (two sticks) butter, softened

1 cup light brown sugar (it’s not the end of the world if you use dark  brown sugar)

1 egg yolk

2 cups unbleached white flour (like Mom, Aunt Reva avoided artificial ingredients—hence no bleached flour)

1 tsp. vanilla extract

12 ounces semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup coarsely chopped pecans

Directions

Grease a 9 x 12 cookie sheet with a rim (called a jelly roll pan back in the day)

Cream butter and sugar. Add egg yolk and mix well. Stir in flour until there are no streaks of dry flour. Add vanilla.

Spread batter in greased pan and bake for 25 minutes at 350^o.

Immediately cover cake with chocolate bits and return to oven for three or four minutes. Remove pan and use table knife to spread melted chocolate evenly over the cake. Sprinkle with nuts while chocolate is still warm, so the pecan pieces will adhere.

Cool completely before cutting. Makes about thirty bars.

More chocolate another time!