"lots of chocolate for me to eat..."

I found this delicious Flourless Chocolate Cake recipe over at Epicurious and have made it twice already in two weeks! As a chocoholic, this cake definitely meets my criteria for good chocolatey taste but the best thing about it is how easy it is to make, everything mixed in one bowl and popped in the oven. Here's the low down:

4 ounces fine-quality bittersweet chocolate (not unsweetened)

1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter

3/4 cup sugar

3 large eggs

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder plus additional for sprinkling

1. Preheat oven to 375°F and butter an 8-inch round baking pan. Line bottom with a round of wax paper and butter paper.

2. Chop chocolate into small pieces. In a double boiler or metal bowl set over a saucepan of barely simmering water melt chocolate with butter, stirring, until smooth.

3. Remove top of double boiler or bowl from heat and whisk sugar into chocolate mixture. Add eggs and whisk well. Sift 1/2 cup cocoa powder over chocolate mixture and whisk until just combined.

4. Pour batter into pan and bake in middle of oven 25 minutes, or until top has formed a thin crust. Cool cake in pan on a rack 5 minutes and invert onto a serving plate. Dust cake with additional cocoa powder and serve with sorbet if desired. (Cake keeps, after being cooled completely, in an airtight container, 1 week.) (Recipe courtesy of Epicurious.com)

cupcakes and pirates

-- I figured that's what it would take to keep the attention of five boisterous boys in my kids club class this morning. Never mind that this was a Sunday school and here I was encouraging them to draw their best skull and cross bones... but they didn't need much encouragement, it was a pretty gnarly line-up:
With some equally gnarly pirate grins to boot!

Of course, the best part was getting to frost and eat their checkers at the end :)

chocolate coconut clusters

I was inspired by my blogger friend at wee treats by tammy and decided to give these a try. They reminded me a lot of Romany Creams, a childhood favorite of mine in South Africa, which I have long wondered how to make, so I set to work. Once they came out the oven and surpassed an initial taste test or three, I used chocolate buttercream icing to stick some of them together. But even though my husband gave me the thumbs up it wasn't quite what I had remembered as a child. And then it dawned on me... melted chocolate, of course! That's what they used to stick the Romany Creams together. I can't wait to try that out!

Here's the recipe from Tammy's blog, which I encourage you to check out, for both baking and cooking inspiration -- she has some great easy dinner ideas which I've also been glad to find.

Chocolate Coconut Clusters (adapted from the old Edmonds cook book)

75g butter
75g sugar
1 egg
1 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 c coconut
2 tbsp cocoa
1 tbsp milk

· Cream the sugar and butter and then beat in the egg.
· Stir in the dry ingredients and lastly the milk.
· Roll into balls and flatten with a fork.
· Bake at 180c (350F) for 15 minutes.
Once cold join together with chocolate butter cream icing.