It satisfies, it fascinates and it’s got a rich history — what’s the deal with chocolate?
Ask Pauline Ofstad what her favorite chocolate recipe is, and she laughs. “It will just take me a second to get it,” says the Lakewood grandmother. “I always keep it handy because so many people ask me about it.”
Ofstad is to chocolate what Hemingway is to writing. She has competed in — and won — State fair baking competitions for almost 40 years, including first place in the fair’s Ghirardelli-sponsored competition in 2004 with something called chocolate molten cakes. So, with Valentine’s Day upon us, who better to ask about chocolate’s appeal than someone who knows this much about it?
Because, frankly, chocolate has always kind of baffled me. I appreciate a chocolate chip cookie now and then, and a bit of brownie is always welcome, but this whole chocolate thing, the chocolate decadence cakes and the chocolate towers and all of the 1980s restaurant cuisine created around heaping piles of chocolate, has never much appealed to me. Give me a well-made apple tart or a blueberry pie; now that’s dessert.
“But the thing about chocolate is that so many people are passionate about it,” says Ofstad, who bakes not only in competitions but for her husband, grandchildren and daughter, whom she describes as a chocolate fiend. “I know a lot of people who don’t love chocolate, but I also know a lot of people who do love chocolate. If it’s chocolate, they want it for dessert.”
There are all sorts of scientific facts and almost-facts about chocolate’s popularity, especially among women — which is especially interesting, since some research indicates that the Mayans and Aztecs, who were probably the first to turn cocoa beans into chocolate about 1,500 years ago, didn’t allow women near the stuff. And the Victorians were likely the first culture to give chocolate gifts for Valentine’s Day, which is also especially interesting given their wonderfully repressed attitude towards sex. Could that have been the first example of substituting food for affection?
Since then, chocolate has been called an aphrodisiac, addictive (since it contains caffeine), and it’s supposed to be good for the heart since it contains antioxidants (though one wonders where its fat content figures into that). Chocolate may even contain some mood-altering chemicals, according to the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, that resemble the active ingredient in marijuana. But researchers have also found that, to get high, you’d have to eat more than 25 pounds of chocolate in one sitting.
All of this, of course, overlooks what Ofstad has always found — that chocolate tastes good.
“It’s not dessert if it’s not chocolate,” she says. “The people who are passionate about it, they like any degree of chocolate.”
Ofstad’s award-winning repertoire includes not just the molten cakes, but a chocolate crème brulee and a chocolate layer cake. But it’s the molten cakes, she says, that not only attract the most attention, but that bring the most smiles at dessert time.
The recipe is deceptively simple — just two ounces of chocolate per serving, plus butter, eggs and sugar that are combined and then and baked in ramekins to produce a soft, liquidy center of chocolate inside a flourless, cake-like exterior. “Cut into it, and it’s like syrup,” she says. “It’s delicious. Garnish it with some powdered sugar sprinkled over the top and some raspberries on the side, and that’s a dessert anyone would be proud to serve.”
She may be right. That even sounds good to someone who doesn’t much care for chocolate. Wonder what I’m having for dessert on Feb. 14?
