A love letter to chocolate (and knowing what you want)

I am not a bakery taking specialty orders

Growing up, the two rules I broke consistently were watching TV on weekdays and eating sweets outside of dessert in my room. My mother tried to make me feel bad about finding Tootsie Roll wrappers under my bed (but if they’re forbidden, where else would I have kept them???)

Something about having to hoard candy as a child stuck with me. I have always loved and will always love chocolate, and I have strong opinions about which chocolate and when. I’m not sure what further credibility to offer other than that I literally high fived a man in a CVS in the last week over Cadbury Mini Eggs being available this early in the year — of particular note when I generally try to avoid human contact.

Chocolate was on my mind with Valentine’s Day because you can’t avoid the red Russell Stover hearts anywhere. I actually asked Google how Russell Stover was still in business and the Gemini summary said “Russell Stover remains in business by leveraging its strong brand nostalgia, deeply entrenched holiday traditions, and a strategic 2014 acquisition by Swiss chocolatier Lindt & Sprüngli.” Or in other words “Russell Stover was bailed out by Lindt but does pretty well a couple of times a year.”

I am generally a chocolate snob but I’m willing to go low brow if the results are tasty. For example, I’ll turn my nose up at a Hershey bar but genuinely enjoy a Hershey kiss atop a peanut butter or gingerbread “blossom.” I’m sure those of you reading this who prefer a single source dark chocolate have already turned on me for my Mini Egg enthusiasm. Sometimes you want something fancy and sometimes you’re a low key Augustus Gloop, not willing to throw yourself in a river per se, but also understanding his motivations.

The point is: I know what I like and I’m not apologizing for it.

Loving chocolate and being action-oriented leads one in a natural direction: baking. I used to bake with my mother until she discovered the benefits of child labor and outsourced a lot of it to me. I baked cookies on her behalf for church events and made shortbread for one of my brothers for some kind of high school family tree project (leaning on our Scottish heritage and finding a recipe in “Joy of Cooking” as opposed to some kind of long-held family tradition).

I boasted about my brownie baking skills at my first job and ended up in a brownie bake-off against my department’s SVP when I was an entry-level employee. I was blissfully unaware of any kind of career implications or opportunities. Instead, it was simply a battle of Ina’s recipe (my choice) vs. the Katherine Hepburn recipe from the NYT. Ina and I naturally won or I likely wouldn’t be telling the story here out of shame, but the real win was that I used the proofreading and compliance department for taste-testing the whole week before and the entire time I worked at that job saw all my work get rushed through for expedited review.

My SVP, to her credit, announced a fudge-making rematch that left me crying on the floor of my apartment and I both lost and vowed to never make anything requiring a candy thermometer again. (FYI, no one come at me in the comments about the “softball method.” Tried that too. Everything fell apart including my attempts at sanity).

Back to the high-low of it all: while I love Ina’s recipe, and recently fell for these fabulous triple chocolate brownies from NYT Cooking, I firmly believe in the power of a Ghirardelli mix brownie. Outside of the convenience, the chew is perfect, the level of chocolate (at least in both the Double Chocolate and Dark Chocolate flavors) sublime, walk the tightrope of dense but fudgy. I honestly think that mix is a masterpiece.

I also like corner pieces best, so I bought an “all edges” brownie pan only for Youngest to inform me that she just likes middle pieces. In one of our moves, I ended up getting rid of that pan since I didn’t see the point in keeping it. Of course, since tastes change from the age of 8 to 18, Youngest is now quite happy with edges and so I feel my whole body tense with anger when I see a pan with more middle than edge left. That’s what I get for relegating my preferences to a Southeastern Michigan Buy Nothing Facebook group.

Years ago, I threw together a batch of Ghirardelli mix brownies and added some peanut butter chips to the mix for a spin on the classic. After everyone finished, Jeff said “hmmm, I feel like most of us like these without peanut butter chips better” and then took a vote among the kids.

I was utterly gobsmacked. I made brownies the way I wanted (the all-edge pan was long gone but peanut butter chips were at least a small consolation) and kindly shared them with the family. I am not a bakery taking specialty orders!

I indicated clear displeasure at that moment via my face, tone, and words, but Jeff and I spoke about it at length later. First, he was unaware that I had won a small department brownie bake-off at a New York ad agency in 2006. Second, he just assumed that I would want to make everyone’s favorite brownies. And sometimes I do. But sometimes, I’m throwing together some brownies from a mix because I want to eat them myself and the only feedback I’m interested in is a “thank you” and for all the center brownies to be gone but the corners left behind.

As a stepmom, I thought baking would be my secret weapon but then ended up with one vegan, one dessert-disliker, and one brownie piece flip-flopper. There’s lots of times when I aim to please them, but sometimes you just have to bake for an audience of one. At least that way you get exactly what you want.

I can practice self-care for myself and leave it on the counter for others should they want them. But the peanut butter chips stay. I’m telling myself that’s modeling self-advocacy for my children.

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