WbLL- what boredom looks like...

2 cups sugar

2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa

1 1/2 cups milk

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup butter

1 1/2 vanilla

1 1/2 cups toasted chopped walnuts*

In a heavy 4-quart saucepan over medium heat combine sugar, cocoa, milk, and salt. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Continue cooking, not stirring, until mixture reaches 235° on a candy thermometer. Remove from heat; stir in butter and vanilla. Let stand to cool for about 1 hour, until mixture comes to room temperature. Wit a wooden spoon, beat until fudge thickens and loses its gloss. Stir in toasted walnuts and spoon into a buttered 8-inch square pan. Cool completely then cut into 1-inch squares.

*To toast nuts, spread out in a single layer on a baking sheet. Toast in a 350° oven, stirring occasionally, for 10 to 15 minutes. Or, toast in an ungreased skillet over medium heat, stirring, until golden brown and aromatic.

When I finished this recipe, after impatiently cooling my fudge, I cut into it, and it came out gooey -- and not and in a good way. Common sense should have told me to throw out the batch and start from scratch. But my sense is very rarely common, and I was bored. So I decided to turn my batch of too-soft-fudge into truffles. In retrospect, maybe it wasn’t the best idea, but I got a melon-baller type of contraption, made round balls and rolled them around in some cocoa powder. What I got, was soft balls of fudge coated in cocoa--not what I was going for.

I just refused to give up, and with the wild cackle of a mad scientist, I decided to throw the cocoa coated fudge balls into a microwave at melt them down again (yes with the roasted nuts in tact, do not try this at home). I then took the molten mess, and came up with an on-the-fly recipe:

2tbsp butter

1 egg

2 tbsp of baking powder

1 ½ cups of flour

¼ cup of oil

Basically, I added the butter to the hot fudge, whisking away so that it would dissolve. Then after beating an egg to death, I added it to the hot fudge(tempering of course, as if it made much of a difference at this point). In another bowl I sifted the dry ingredients together, and then slowly added them to the bowl of fudge. I threw some vegetable oil in for good measure, figuring it would help to make the cake moist, since I was only sacrificing one egg for this chocolate cake debacle. With the faith of a person who just didn't care anymore, I threw the mixture into a greased and floured loaf pan, and into the oven at 350F degrees it went. After an hour I had a chocolate nut cake.

It came out pretty good for a cake that was thrown together and without a recipe. So what did I learn from this? I need to find a good flourless cake recipe. Stay tuned, this isn't the last of the Dominican cocoa powder.