Flourless Chocolate Cake

Those of you who know me personally know that I am a chocolate addict. Even on a diet, I couldn't and wouldn't say no to chocolate.

Mika is now two months and a week old and I'm still stuck with excessive poundage. I know I need to lose weight, but breastfeeding is such hungry and thirsty work. A friend suggested I forego rice altogether and subsist on sabaw, but that's easier said than done, considering I carry and care for a 7 kg baby 24-7.

And so the challenge is to find healthier substitutes for the food I need/want to eat. Flourless Chocolate Cake is one, don't you think? It's flourless so there's less carbohydrate to worry about, and chocolate comes from a bean, which is a vegetable, so it's healthy, right? Hahaha.

That one up there was a birthday gift by my friend Beth back in 2005. But I still remember how gooey and heavenly it was. Maybe you need a chocolate fix too? CacaoWeb's a chocolate recipe haven. Maybe the toiling before the munching (nay, cheating) will burn some calories and take away some of the guilt. :)

Kitchen Boy

Of my two boys, it is Gabriel who shares my interest in toiling in the kitchen. He's always volunteering to help, is always around watching what I do, and has since cooked Tinolang Manok (Gingered Chicken Soup) with only a little guidance and instruction from me.

The pic above was taken in my mother in law's kitchen in North Cotabato back in 2006. The stove is typical of houses in the provinces and is fed with firewood. (It is however quickly losing out to the more convenient, air-friendly gas stoves.) This stove had a pugon (wood-fired oven) which my husband said has seen better days.

On that vacation I tried baking a cake in a pugon at my sister-in-law's house and it was quite an adventure -- having no thermostat to rely on, having no see-through oven door, and having have to go back out every so often to feed wood to the fire was arduous. (And to think back then this was the only way to go..)

The difficulty was compounded by the fact that I didn't have tools (no measuring cups, no mixer) and was quadrupling the recipe to have cake good for 50 people.

I wasn't too happy with the results -- the banana cake was harder and less flavorful than I wanted it to be, but oddly enough, twas wiped out to the last morsel. Maybe the folks were plain hungry. :)