For me any day is an excuse to eat chocolate. But the one day to surrender entirely to that velvety embrace, to luxuriate in that dark lusciousness, is, of course, Valentine’s Day.
Thanks to a vigorous chocolate industry, you can bathe in chocolate, wash yourself in chocolate, soften your skin with chocolate, wear chocolate panties, paint yourself with chocolate, illuminate the room with chocolate—or let it slowly melt on your tongue and slip down your throat until you imagine yourself floating down a chocolate Amazon.
The experience of chocolate is like no other. Chocolate dissolves your body, dispersing it like a Star Trek transporter, reassembling you again into a relaxed loving soul. If it throws you into paroxysms of ecstasy, there’s a good reason for it, and it has everything do with the ancient Mayas.
The Mayas, of course, invented cacao, and as chocolate eaters, we too can experience Mayan cosmology. On top of a Mayan pyramid in a secret chamber, ancient Maya priests prepared themselves—by piercing their tongues, enduring hallucinogenic enemas, and imbibing cacao—to traverse the universe. In religious ecstasy, their spirits simultaneously plunged down through the black waters of Xibalbá to the nine underworlds, and soared up to the thirteenth sky, navigating darkness and light, death and life. Is it any wonder chocolate makes us loopy?
Chocolate contains tryptophan which makes us sleepy and relaxed. It contains small quantities of anandamide, an endogenous cannabinoid found in the brain (yes, the same stuff in pot). It contains theobromine and caffeine which have a stimulatory effect on the brain. But chocolate’s key ingredient is phenylethylamine, which raises levels of endorphins, the pleasure-giving substances, in the brain. Chocolate plays with our minds.
A 2007 study sponsored by Cadbury found that chocolate makes us happier than sex! Couples in their 20s had their heart rates and brains monitored while they first melted chocolate in their mouths and then kissed. A happier group of grad students there never was. While kissing set their hearts pounding, the effect did not last as long as the chocolate, which increased heart rates from a resting rate of about 60 beats per minute to 140. Chocolate also stimulated all regions of their brains longer and more intensely than when kissing, and lasted four times as long as the most passionate kiss.
Chocolate is healthful for our bodies, too. Like red wine, chocolate has resveratrol, a powerful antioxidant that protects heart and blood vessels, and guards our DNA from damage that can lead to cancer. In addition, the flavanols and procyanidins in chocolate improve the function and flow of blood vessels and help control inflammation.
A study of 8000 male Harvard graduates showed that chocoholics lived longer than abstainers. But we don’t need studies to tell us we will live longer if we eat chocolate and drink red wine. Of course we will. We’ll be happier!
Have a great Valentine’s Day everybody!
And if anyone needs a last minute Valentine’s day present, put together a Mad Housewife gift basket—1 bottle of Mad Housewife Merlot, dark chocolate, 2 fancy cheeses (the kind with foreign names), strawberries, pears, or grapes, and a dozen red roses. Good luck! If you don’t get a kiss, there’s always chocolate.
Chocolate Log with Strawberries
When my friend Lynn Moore served this incredible desert, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. More chocolate than chocolate, this would make a Maya priest cry. Serve with Mad Housewife Merlot.
6 ounces Nutella
1 cup cream
1/3 cup hazelnuts (or pecans)
2 tablespoons of flour
6 ounces of bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 stick unsalted butter
4 eggs, separated
1/2 cup sugar
pinch salt
¼ teaspoon cream of tarter
cocoa powder for dusting
powdered sugar for dusting
1 pint large strawberries
1. Heat cream in microwave and mix with Nutella. Set aside.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line jelly roll pan (a cookie sheet with edges) with parchment paper.
3. Grind nuts and mix with flour.
4. Melt chocolate in the microwave until just melted, using 20 second intervals. Do the same for the butter, then combine with the chocolate.
5. Stir in egg yolks, half of the sugar, and salt. Add in nuts and flour.
6. In separate chilled bowl, beat egg whites until foamy. Add rest of sugar (1/4 cup) and cream of tartar. Beat until stiff peaks.
7. Fold half of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture. When mixed, carefully fold in the other half. Spread evenly on pan and cook for 10 minutes. It will look glossy and moist. Take out and let cool.
8. Dust top with cocoa powder. Invert on tin foil. Spread with Nutella and cream. Starting on the long side, and using the tin foil for support, roll up cake. Refrigerate for two hours.
9. Before serving, dust with powdered sugar and garnish with berries.
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