All posts tagged: chocolate

Molly Wizenberg’s “Winning Hearts and Minds Cake”

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This week, I decided to bake a cake. I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that I am not a big dessert lover, but this is a special occasion because next week, The Husband and I are getting married! It probably looks funny that I just said that, but he has been my husband all along. We have been a couple for nearly a decade, although we’ve known each other for even longer. We met way back in the early 1990’s when both of us were fresh out of college. We bonded over our shared love of books. He wanted to be a writer; I had dreams of working in museums and restoring art. Fast forward 20 years and we’ve been through thick and thin; richer and poorer. Through my weird and terrifying illnesses, he’s been by my side. Through his very stressful job that took him all over the country every week for years, I’ve held down the fort. We’ve been through the fire so often our molecules have fused and we are made stronger for it. He knows me better …

The Year I Learn to Bake: Ina Garten’s Baked Chocolate Pudding

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My stand mixer has been sitting on the countertop, patiently waiting for me to remember my New Year’s resolution to learn how to bake.  I’ll bet you thought I’d forgotten about it, too!  More likely, I’ll bet you thought it would be so much more fulfilling to resolve to be more organized or eat fewer calories…or perhaps even exercise more?  And not that there’s anything wrong with being virtuous, but aren’t most resolutions broken by the middle of February anyway? So, this was my way of setting myself up for success.   This is how you WIN at resolution-making:  make resolutions that you actually don’t mind keeping long-term! Being that it’s Valentine’s Day and I’m not adept at this whole baking thing yet, I decided to try something easy; something fairly fool-proof that didn’t contain anything terribly exotic and could be whipped up in mere minutes.  This recipe for Baked Chocolate Pudding fit the bill perfectly! I found it in Ina Garten’s “Back to Basics” cookbook and true to Ina’s form, there were only seven …