Chocolate Pavé: A Wonka-Forward Experience
A recipe to honor the inimitable Willy.
February 1 means one thing in our house: It’s Wonka Day, the day in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when the Golden Ticket Winners gain admittance to Wonka’s magical world. Few people recognize this holiday, but for the Boyds, Wonka Day is canon.
I’m at a retreat with my writers group this weekend, so our family celebration looks a little different from usual. We likely won’t indulge in our typical Violet Beauregarde gum-inspired meal (tomato soup, roast beef and baked potato, blueberry pie and cream). I’ll return home with enough time to share some chocolate with the family, and I’ll tell you now that I began the day with a Wonka-honoring treat: a slice of David Lebovitz’s chocolate pavé for breakfast.
Let me back up to say: at our writers group retreats, we eat well. Four women who know their way around the kitchen and enjoy good food makes for a pretty spectacular culinary experience — and I was pleased to contribute a modest flourless chocolate cake to the spread last night.
I confess that I took an hour away from our designated afternoon writing time to bake this treat, and I’m not sorry. The intoxicating aroma of melted chocolate and butter stirred together into silky smoothness makes it all worthwhile, even before taking a single bite. Six eggs separated methodically, whipped separately, then combined with sugar, a pinch of salt, and the chocolate-butter mixture yield fluffy clouds of batter that bake into the tenderest flourless chocolate cake that will ever melt in your mouth.
In his wonderful book Ready for Dessert, David Lebovitz instructs us to bake this cake the traditional way, using a 9x9 pan that yields sturdy square slices (thus the name pavé, meaning “paving stone” in French). But I like fancy, so I tend to bake it in a 9” springform for a glorious round of chocolate goodness. We dressed it up after dinner with fresh whipped cream and homemade ganache. This morning at breakfast, I omitted the ganache (that would be excessive), but noted that with six eggs, this cake is practically an omelet — one that Willy Wonka would be very proud of.
Tidbits
A few special things I’ve read lately and loved:
Today, I learned something else about February 1: This is the 66th anniversary of the Greensboro Sit-In, the days when four brave Black colleges students sat at the lunch counter in non-violent protest of segregation laws. (Thank you, Emily P. Freeman, for educating us!)
Krista Tippett writes compassionately about our sore hearts in these days.
I keep thinking about this new poem by Michael Bazzett entitled “From Minneapolis in January.”
I’m curious to explore Oliver Burkemann’s freewriting recommendation as a problem-solving tool.