Molten lava cake for National Chocolate Cake Day

January 27 is National Chocolate Cake Day in the United States. To be honest, I thought every day was chocolate cake day. This warm (and flourless) chocolate lava cake is delicious enough to declare a national celebration. But to help keep us all focused, there are several national food day lists floating around like this one to make sure all kinds of decadent delights get their day.

I’m a little curious, though, how National Pie Day, National Peanut Butter Day, and National Chocolate Cake Day all fall in the same week. I have a sneaking suspicion that the final week of January is right about the time that most folks have felt pretty good about the three weeks of intense dieting and exercise they have done after the holidays. Admit it. Your thinking has probably come close to this at some point: “I’ve been to the gym twice this week. Of course I deserve pie/peanut butter/chocolate cake!”

Molten lava cakes are the perfect little cakes to celebrate National Chocolate Cake Day. They require relatively little effort and bake in less than 15 minutes. Even if the cakes collapse into a quivering pool of warm chocolate, I promise you that your guests will not complain. Cover them with enough ice cream and in one, two, three, swoops of their spoons the cake will be gone.

But if you do want to impress a loved one, you might want a practice run or two to figure out the best results with your oven. If you underbake it, you will end up with a puddle of chocolate (there are worse things). If you overbake, by even a minute, no molten center – and you’ll end up with more of a brownie cake (again, not a travesty).

Now get celebrating. And keep this recipe handy for Valentine’s Day.

Molten Lava Cake
Adapted from Bon Appétit
Serves 4

6-1/2 ounces bittersweet or unsweetened chocolate, chopped (Note: good-quality chocolate chips are an easy shortcut)
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
Pinch of salt

4 large egg yolks
4 tablespoons sugar, separated
2 large egg whites

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Butter four 3/4 cup custard cups. Dust with flour, shaking out excess, and set aside.

In a double boiler over simmering water, combine chocolate, butter, and salt and heat. Stir until chocolate and butter have melted and mixture is smooth. Remove upper pot from water and let cool 10 minutes.

Beat egg yolks and 3 tablespoons sugar in large bowl until thick and light, about 2 minutes. Fold in chocolate mixture. In a separate bowl beat egg whites and 1 tablespoon sugar using electric mixer with clean, dry beaters, until whites are stiff but not dry. Gently fold whites into chocolate mixture in 3 additions. Divide batter among prepared cups.

Place custard cups on a baking sheet. Bake until cakes are puffed but still soft in center, about 11 minutes. Transfer baking sheet to rack; cool cakes 1 minute.

Using a small knife, cut around sides of cakes to loosen. Place plates on top of cups. Using an oven mitt or tea towel (the cups will be hot) invert cakes onto plates; remove cups. Serve immediately with a dollop of whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Related posts: Chocolate Fondue, Fair Trade Brownies, Taza Chocolate Tour

Cheerful cheddar corn chowder

About this time of year I’m missing seeing more of the sun’s face. Although I was delighted to notice last night at 5 p.m. that the night sky, instead of being an inky black, was more of a dark cerulean blue. Longer days are slowly creeping back.

I have a wooden Swedish star light on my windowsill that is timed to click on each evening and turn off as I get settled in between flannel sheets. It’s the only Christmas ornament that I allow to overstay the holiday season. I still need a bright spot to look forward to long after the festival of lights has ended.

That’s why cheddar corn chowder is the perfect bright! and sunny! soup for a cold and dark winter twilight. I had spotted a recipe for it on The Food Channel (not the Food Network, The Food Channel is a great Web-based cooking resource with lots of ideas and how-to videos). I adapted their recipe for cheddar corn chowder quite a lot. Theirs fed 10 (!), I eliminated some of the fats (oil and butter?), and added garlic, sweet orange pepper, and fresh cilantro for flavor and color.

Mushroom stroganoff (and retro pink)

I have a dilemma. I have retro pink bathroom circa 1965 and I am trying to decide if I should “preserve” it as an example mid-century modern, or simply begin again. I have a pink tub, pink sink, pink commode and pink tile trims. And this rubber duckie.

Cherry blink Christmas cookies

In the middle of the rush to get ready for the holidays, Rebecca stopped by armed with two shopping bags full of ingredients. As I wrapped presents she worked on these cherry blinks for her colleagues at the private school on Beacon Hill where she teaches.

When I finally stretched out in a chair Cricket climbed into my lap and started purring loudly as if to say, “Stay here for awhile.”

Faster than a wink of an eye, Rebecca handed me a mug of peppermint tea and a plate of warm cherry blinks. She changed things up a bit from the traditional recipe, using pecans and dried dates. Crunchy and sweet with their festive cherries, these would make a delicious addition to any Christmas cookie platter.

Revolutionary gingerbread cupcakes with lemon cream cheese frosting

Things are definitely looking cheery and sparkly and sugary these days. Thanksgiving may be all about gratitude and huge, heaping platefuls of food, but food traditions around Christmas tend to have more ethereal qualities like imagination and hope and wonder.

If the essence of Christmas was boiled down into flavors they would be, for me, gingerbread and peppermint. I don’t eat much peppermint any other time of the year, with the exception of the hard candies you can scoop up on your way out of some restaurants. In a word: ordinary. But at Christmas time peppermint becomes whimsical architectural features on gingerbread houses and swings gaily from the boughs of evergreens as striped canes.

The same goes for gingerbread, as an everyday cake it helps digestion. But as a house! Or an army of Men! It is magical. Gingerbread fits with this time of year, too. Eating a gingerbread man in July would feel the same as twisting a woolen scarf around your neck and belting out a few verses of “Deck the Halls” on a summer’s day. You just don’t do that in July.

In our family, we have a tradition of Gingerbread People on Christmas morning. This is one tradition that my mom holds onto very tightly, even as scenes shift and people come and go from Christmas morning over the years. The Gingerbread People are always there, a comforting, slightly lumpy, presence.

Roasted Brussels sprouts with walnuts and figs

For some reason Brussels sprouts is a vegetable capable of releasing passion. Like this:

I love Brussels sprouts!

or

I hate Brussels sprouts!

Very rarely do you hear, “Brussels sprouts? Meh. I could take them or leave them.”

It’s sad really, because in the much-loved, much-hated division we are all overlooking an important point: Brussels sprouts are cute.

Green bean casserole

Every Thanksgiving I brace myself for the inevitable: green bean casserole.

Green bean casserole, invented by Campbell’s Soup in 1955, is adored by literally millions of Americans. I am not in this group. Our family, lead by mother’s disdain for opening a can of creamed mushroom soup and dumping it on vegetables, ate peas and pearl onions instead.

Usually I allow myself an air of historic superiority as I dismiss green bean casserole when it is offered – surely the original Thanksgiving did not include a dish from a can.

But this year I may soften my stance a bit. I’ve been reading an informative and insightful cookbook, “Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving Recipes and History, from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie” by Kathleen Curtin, Sandra L. Oliver, and Plimoth Plantation.

Pumpkin raisin muffins

Every fall, a pumpkin turns up in our lobby with my name on it. It’s from the seller’s agent who sold me my condo nearly eight (!) years ago.

The pumpkin usually appears bearing a recipe printed on orange paper rolled up in a scroll and rubber banded to its stem. This year Miss Pumpkin even had a little Halloween bling. Fancy, Miss Pumpkin!

I decided I wanted to try making my own Miss Pumpkin purée for this year’s recipe: Pumpkin and Raisin Muffins. (Warning: Look away if you must. Miss Pumpkin guts ahead.)

Stuffed spaghetti squash

Sometimes squash can be intimidating. They are weird looking, require a huge knife to hack them open, and then take hours in the oven to roast and soften. Spaghetti squash are the smoothest of the squash family. Their flesh, when cooked, breaks apart in strings not unlike angel hair pasta. But don’t be fooled. It is still a squash.

I just learned a great squash trick. You can soften a squash in 8 minutes in the microwave. Yes. Just halve it, scoop out the seeds, cover it in plastic wrap and nuke for 8 minutes. You’ll want to let it rest a bit so you don’t scald your fingers when you remove the plastic wrap.

Mushroom broccoli risotto

I wish I had a picture of risotto to share with you. If I had a picture you’d see soft pillowy mounds of arborio rice, with flecks of green broccoli, and earthy mushrooms held together with Grana Padano cheese but I don’t. Because I ate it before I could take a picture. All of it. It was that good.

So here is an autumn Valentine for you instead.

It’s almost as good, right?

I felt like I had gotten a Valentine the night my friends came over to eat risotto in heaping bowlfuls. My friends are all single urbanites, charging in a million different directions. I wan’t sure who would show up at the dinner table. In the end, there were five of us – just kind of “coming home” together after a week of hectic schedules, new jobs, and surviving the ordinary.