Chipotle Chocolate Chunk Cookies

If I’m honest, the last few weeks have not been the best for me. Just the stuff of life. With a dash of frustration. A pinch of missed opportunity. And a cup and a half of failure.

No biggie.

But one of the major benefits of growing longer in the tooth is that you learn to self-soothe. Don’t you think?

So when I found myself on the couch at the end of last week, surrounded by no less than 3 empty cartons of Ben & Jerry’s Greek Frozen Yogurt, listening to the dulcet tones of Hanson, and weeping over a particularly emotional commercial for Tillamook cheese, I saw the writing on the wall. It was time to kick the self-soothe machine into high gear.

I hit the gym for some Sweat Therapy. I hit the stores for some Retail Therapy. I hit the business end of my remote control for some Reality Therapy. And, of course, I hit the kitchen for some Calorie Counseling.

You know, the usual recipe for feeling better in no time.

But what’s this?

What to do when all the usual suspects aren’t answering with the warm wash of comfort?

Peanut butter, pizza, impulse shoe shopping and Say Yes To The Dress don’t fail me now!

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Amazing! Impossible! Chocoflan!

Did you ever attend one of those birthday parties where the featured entertainment was a wacky performing magician? You know, pulling quarters from behind peoples’ ears and extracting rabbits from top hats? I haven’t been to one in a while…  perhaps they’re now pulling credit cards from behind ears and iPhones from top hats. (M.! Your cynicism is showing!)

I did attend a few back in the day, and I remember being pretty unimpressed. Not because I was immediately able to identify the solution, but because I knew there was one. And I was perfectly fine leaving it at that.

I do remember being way more concerned about the likelihood of acquiring a second and third piece of birthday cake.

Priorities, people.

I think that baking is a special form of magic, and no recipe exemplifies that more clearly than Chocoflan, also known as flan imposible.

The making of a magic Chocoflan goes something like this:

Step 1:  Spread chocolate cake batter in the bottom of a pan.

Step 2:  Pour flan batter on top of the cake batter.

Step 3:  Bake for a long time in a water bath.

Step 4:  Cool the cake.

Step 5:  Invert and unmold the cake.

And it’s magic!

During the baking process the two elements of the cake will have switched places with the porous cake floating to the top and the dense, milky flan settling on the bottom. Everything bakes and sets and it’s a gloriously rich, impressively stacked treat.

But it seems impossible! And there are many opportunities for self-doubt along the way. Just before setting my filled dish in the oven I noted that some of my cake batter had already floated into the flan. Was it a flan fail in the making? I checked my gut, put my cake in the water bath and then in the oven, and hoped for best.

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