Chocolate Espresso Pots de Cr�me
Frozen Chocolate Caramel Parfaits
Layer Cake with Milk Chocolate Frosting
My father called himself the automatic dishwasher, but he had a hidden agenda:
Cleaning up gave him the perfect opportunity to indulge in a not-so-secret chocolate snack.
After dinner, he would head to the kitchen, drape his suit jacket over a kitchen stool,
tuck his tie inside his shirt, and slip a butcher-style apron over his head.
Then, before filling the sink with soapy water, and when he thought no one was watching,
he would root around in the cupboard where the baking supplies were kept.
Sometimes he'd find a bar of German sweet chocolate he'd hidden there, but a bag of
chocolate chips my mother was saving for cookies or a chunky block of
semisweet baking chocolate was also fair game. Grinning, he'd break off a few
squares from the bar or pour himself a handful of chips and pop them in his mouth.
The maneuver had to be swift for him to avoid being caught, chocolate-handed,
by my brothers and me as we cleared the table, but occasionally we'd get lucky
and he'd be obliged to break off a piece for each of us.
Chocolate, whether eaten on the sly or out in the open, was a signature of my father's.
If my mother received a box of fancy chocolates as a hostess gift,
my father was the one who punched the bottoms looking for the best fillings.
Trips to his office on Saturdays meant club sandwiches for lunch and Hershey bars for dessert.
Squares of semisweet chocolate carried in his knapsack on family expeditions
were his insurance against "how much longer" whines.
And on the way home, he always managed to find someplace for
chocolate ice cream cones in the summer or hot cocoa in the winter.
My brothers liked chocolate well enough, but it was with me,
his only daughter, that the cacao pod fell closest to the tree.
Hardly a day goes by that I don't eat some little nugget of chocolate,
and at times I'm just as clandestine as my father.
I can't hide my stash in the kitchen cupboard the way he did because
I live in an overheated New York City apartment, so instead I keep it on the bottom shelf of the fridge,
in the back, where no one bothers to look.
If my father were alive today, he'd relish the increasingly dark,
extra-bittersweet chocolates that are the current rage. Like a macho chile head,
he'd want to see just how high a percentage of cocoa solids
� the higher the number, the less sweet the chocolate � he could handle.
But he wouldn't forsake his childhood favorite, milk chocolate.
The chocolate cake (see recipe at right) would have suited him just fine.
It's a win-win combination of dark, chocolaty cake layers and gooey milk chocolate frosting.
A container of the hot fudge sauce (see recipe at right) is already hidden in my refrigerator.
Ostensibly, it's waiting to be reheated and draped on chocolate caramel parfaits
or scoops of ice cream, but more likely it will be eaten as occasional
little evening spoonfuls, solid and delightfully chewy,
when it's time for me to do the dishes.