Powerful Anti-depressant on A Spoon:
The flavor, silky texture, warm temperature is restorative.
Fast, easy, rewarding. Wards off the blues, eases depression, and gives someone on 24 hour watch something to look forward to.
If there is someone under your care or influence grieving right now, move right on to the emergency recipe in red. Bring that soul with you to the kitchen and put away all the knives. Throw this together with what you have on hand. The smells alone are soothing to the soul.
If you have a well-stocked kitchen or when you were confessing suicidal thoughts to your mother, she suggested that “you let it be a surprise,” you might have time to consider the technical aspects of this recipe.
Ingredients:
1 Cup butter
½ Cup cocoa (not hot chocolate mix)
2 Tablespoons black cocoa (optional)
2 ounces melted chocolate (optional)
1 ½ teaspoon vanilla
4 eggs
1 ½ Cup caster sugar
½ Cup flour
½ teaspoon salt
Cocoa is the foundation of this curative treat.
The lighter colored cocoas are ‘natural;’ they are slightly more bitter than is present in the cocoa bean. For a person staggering beneath the bitterness of life, use Dutch Processed. It’s smoother.
The really dark cocoa – black cocoa – has been super alkalized with potassium carbonate. It does not have more cocoa bean per square inch, just a darker color and no bitterness even if you lick the dust right off your finger. Purists argue that the ‘dutch’ process slays some flavanols. You decide.
In a previous decade, I had a chocolate tasting party. I gathered scads of bars, preferring those that controlled the whole bean-bar process. I put them on different tables based on continent of origin, basically Africa, South America, and Central America. My taste buds found the African chocolate, regardless of where processed, to have a woodier taste. South American chocolate at that time varied wildly. I fell in love with Central American chocolate. Some of the fruity flavors interplay with something lighter, perhaps divine.
Right, then, on to the Instructions: Preheat oven to 375°. Butter a deep casserole dish, oval or round.
- You get to bloom some chocolate. You are probably not a virgin in chocolate blooming, you may just not realize that you have done it. So melt the butter in a pan until there are happy bubbles around the rim. Measure and add the cocoa, stir until smooth.
- You go on to the next bit, leaving the chocolate to bloom on its own.
- Mix the eggs with the sugar until they are fluffy and a sunny yellow. Use high speed.
- Measure and add the flour and salt and stir with a spatula before turning on the mixer; this will prevent the explosive response of dry flour to high speeds. Mix only briefly.
- Go check on the blooming chocolate. Add the vanilla and stir again.
- Add the chocolate to the egg mixture. Mix on medium speed until it is a uniform color being sure to scrape the sides and bottom
I had the feeling of ‘finding my tribe’ when I found out that Valrhona chocolate uses beans, the farming of which they supervise, from Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. And they are French so you know they are persnickety about every aspect. If a child tried to touch a bean, you know that left eyebrow would shoot through the roof.
XOCOTAL So the northern amazon basin and central America have been enjoying chocolate for so manay centuries we could call it a chocolate eon. 3000 B.C. Make sure you are sitting down. They fermented it! That sends my mind into the big blank space in the sky. Not just chocolate, a fermented chocolate drink. And we think we are so smart and civilized.
7. Slightly sophisticated bit here. This life-saving chocolate cheer cooks in a bath. Relax, it’s not that tricky. I use a turkey roasting pan. A lasagna pan could work for a shallow dish. Fill it with as much water as you can successfully carry to the oven. Put foil on the Chocolate Cheer. Add enough water to come up half-way on your baking dish, careful not to splash water into the dish. Once the water is safely away and you have oh so carefully slid the pan fully into the oven, close the door and set the timer for ten minutes. This is when I clean my kitchen; you can get a lot done in ten minutes. When the timer dings, take off the foil. Set the timer for 25 minutes; this is a large chunk of time so you can start dinner, read, do laundry, or read. You do not want to closely examine your floor, that’s just disheartening.
8. When the timer alerts you, check the oven thermometer to verify that your oven has behaving as commanded. If it has been at 375°, you should have a brown cake-like crust on top. Think Lava cake with way more lava than cake. If your oven, like mine, has some sort of erectile dysfunction and only got up to 350°, take a breath and set the timer for ten more minutes.
9.Remove from the oven and apply as needed.
The dark side of chocolate is so very depressing that it required a bowl of emergency S.O.S. to enable me to write this, with whipped cream and nutmeg. I may still need to have a lay down.
There has always been the dark evil of child labor and chocolate but really, it’s worse than that. Poor moms and dads. Poor without food. Dirt floors if they have a hut. Families who cannot feed their children, sell their kids for maybe $200. Then they are sold to a boss who rents them to a cocoa farmer. After maybe 5 years, the farmer, who is illegally using federal land, gives a small patch of this land that does not belong to him, to that slave.
Congress 2001 presented a law to put a “No Child Slavery” label on chocolate but some big chocolate companies, you know their names, lobbied for a voluntary agreement to get gets out of chocolate production by 2005. Voluntary. No law. Things have gotten worse. Buy bean to bar chocolate
Notes: These are so much more cheerier than the side bar that I recommend you read them
- This recipe has been part of my repertoire for over a decade. It has never failed to be heartening. My son prefers the version with double the cocoa and substitute brown sugar; it is much thicker, almost cake-like, and the sugar is quite crunchy. He calls it Chocolate Death. I prefer the silky, goopy version above. Chocolate Cheer morphed into Chocolate S.O.S. I did many renditions before this blog.
2. Blooming chocolate when you do it on purpose, not when you store chocolate improperly and it gets like a white rust, releases more flavors. “Helps those bits of seed coat and membrane to release…extracts flavor compounds from cocoa endosperm” It’s a chemical reaction. You can use hot water, hot liquid, or hot fat. Of course, I use hot butter. Let the magic work for five minutes.
DEPRESSION IS SERIOUS, OFTEN FATAL
Look, this is no joke. The feelings of fear and love exploding when your child says, “Drive me to the hospital. I don’t think that I can stop from killing myself.” Is nothing like the psychic pain the depressed feel every day when they wake up.
It’s not about getting exercise or having fun. It is a debilitating illness.
My sister buried her son.
I thank God that mine woke me up at two a.m. for help. I watch my formerly brilliant child calmly struggle with demon voices threatening to eat his soul daily. He wakes up every day still – that is courage. Every day they threaten, berate, frighten, and even hurt him. Yes, he takes his meds. Seven years and we still haven’t found meds that work.
Mental illness is real and it sucks. Our medical system is broken. The suffering of these souls is unabated.
So be kind. To everyone. If anyone says they want to kill themselves, you give them your phone number. Tell them to call you before they hurt themselves. A promise. Tell them you will answer the phone. This is free love
- Caster sugar is a finer sugar; you can buy it or make it yourself in your blender. Pour in the sugar and whirl. Your eyes will notice the difference.
- Flour: Use whatever flour you prefer. You can substitute cocoa for flour. Almond flour is nice but not as smooth unless you powder it in your blender.
- The water bath. Conquer it. Bain Marie. Heat the water in your tea kettle, it will take two or three loads. Take care adding the water because you don’t want to spill it into your dish. The main bane of Bain Marie is after you take out your finished dessert, you have a gallon of boiling water in a pan in your oven. Take a breath. Just leave it there to cool; when all you really need is a bowl of S.O.S. you could cause a serious medical emergency creating unnecessary drama. Later, when your mind is awash with chocolate endorphins, you can scoop out water into a smaller pan until you can handle carrying the remainder to the sink without sloshing it on the floor.
Warning: No one has established how much Chocolate S.O.S. one person can eat. You will run out before reaching your limit.
Women and Chocolate
Is the hype true? What do they mean when they say ‘chocolate is good for you?’ And dark chocolate? Is it like dark cocoa, more alkalized?
Hype is true: It is an anti-inflamatory, reduces blood pressure, improves cognitive performance, and may reduce cognitive decline.
Dark chocolate has more cocoa in it. You want at least 60% cocoa in your chocolate to derive health benefits. Good chocolate bars also have less sugar. Sugar is NOT good for you.
Women do crave chocolate. Due to hormonal variations, we need magnesium. We find it. Chocolate also reduces cortisol, the stress hormone as well as boosting serotonin and endorphins.
When I was purchasing twenty or so bars, I apologetically explained to the checker, “These are not all for me.”
The gender fluid checker focused more closely on the products and replied, “Oh, I never get between a woman and her chocolate.”
Emergency Super Simple Speedy Instructions:
Emergency Super Simple Speedy Instructions:
Preheat oven to 425° and butter a deep ceramic pie dish.
Melt the butter in a larger sauce pan. Remove from heat. Add the cocoa. Any kind. Stir. Add the vanilla. Stir. Add the sugar, any kind. Stir like crazy for one minute. A whisk or fork is better than a spoon. Add the eggs. Stir thoroughly. Keep your eye on your patient. Add the flour, stirring until mixed. Pour into the pie pan and cover with buttered foil. Put almost an inch of BOILING water in a larger pan. Put the water pan in the oven , THEN gently add the pie pan. Move carefully so water does not slosh. If you pulled out the rack, which I don’t recommend, gently push it back in. Close the door and breathe. Set the timer for ten minutes. Lick then wash the pot and measuring stuff. Remove the foil and set the timer for twelve minutes. Your oven pads will get wet when you remove the pan but stay the course. Pull that dish out from the oven and serve that S.O.S. immediately, blowing on the first bites so as not to burn the tongue as you soothe the soul.
