We've been chocolate blackout cake obsessed since the first time we made it. The cake and pudding are fantastic on their own, but combine the two and you have the best chocolate cake ever!

The last few times we've made this dessert we skipped the icing because it's very temperamental. Instead, we doubled the pudding and used all four layers of cake. Who's not going to like twice as much homemade chocolate pudding?

To prove how good this cake is, all you need to do is take a look at the last picture in the slideshow. That's our friend, Jane, having a piece while in early labor. I'm not kidding! We planned on cooking for Jane and Mark back in September. But, she started having contractions early in the morning so we figured dinner was off. Hungry Bear and I decided to make dinner anyway since we had already gone shopping.

First off, sorry for the lack of posts, but foodgawker has been "eating" up all of our time. We hope to get back on a more frequent schedule soon. Second, we had our one year blogiversary at the beginning of the month, but sadly we didn't get chance to post about it. Hungry Bear did make this incredible chocolate blackout cake to celebrate the milestone.

She used a blackout cake recipe from Sweet Stuff: Karen Barker's American Desserts, but substituted bittersweet Valrhona chocolate for the semisweet. The cake is absolutely delicious, but it's time consuming to make because of the many steps... coffee brewing, pudding creating, cake baking, cookie crumbling and icing making. We loved the pudding and the cake part. There was an extra layer of unused cake and it was fantastic by itself.

The icing tasted good, but we didn't like the hardened texture and it was difficult to work with. If we had to make it again, we would use Gale Gand's fudgy chocolate frosting instead. Or we would skip the icing, double the pudding quantity, use all four cake layers and top it with pudding.

Still, it was one of the best chocolate cakes we've made and definitely worth the effort!

I usually don't get too personal in my posts and just stick to the basics (good food, good photos, good recipe). For the most part, I don't think you are interested in what Hungry Bear and I do outside of our adventures in the kitchen. But, I'm making an exception with this post to fully explain why we made these decadent cocoa brownies.

I've mentioned our NYC friends, Jeff and Aimee, in the past. They organized our first cupcake tasting tour. I met Jeff in 1990 when I was a sophomore at Penn State. Despite getting off on the wrong foot (Jeff initially disliked me, imagine that?), we become very close and eventually lived together for a year and half.

The first time I was offered a tofu chocolate chip cookie, I made a funny face, probably the same look that some of you are giving me right now. With a little hesitation, I took a bite and much to my surprise, the tofu cookie was really good. Ever since then, I've always looked forward to eating the cookies made by our friend, Jeanne. In fact, I like them so much, I've made football game bets with Jeanne, pitting her tofu cookies against my chewy chocolate chunk cookies.

The recipe was created by Jeanne's friend, a certified nutritionist, who wanted to make a healthy alternative to traditional chocolate chip cookies. Butter is not used in the recipe and is replaced with peanut butter and cream cheese. In addition to the soy protein from the tofu, the cookies are made with high-protein egg whites and the aforementioned peanut butter. Lower glycemic index (GI) oat flour is used instead of all-purpose flour. The oat flour is also higher in protein and is gluten-free.

We made the tofu cookies for the first time last week and used white whole wheat flour instead of oat flour, which we couldn't find at the local supermarkets. We thought about using all-purpose flour, but decided to stay true to the healthy intent of the recipe and went with the whole wheat. The tofu cookies were good with predominant flavors from the whole wheat, peanut butter and Valrhona 61% chocolate chunks. I don't think anyone would be able to tell that the cookies contained tofu.

On a cold day, nothing beats a warm chocolate pudding cake for dessert. This is our "go to" dessert during snowboarding trips. It's easy to make and doesn't require a mixer, which may not be available in a rental house kitchen. After a long, chilly day outside, this old-fashioned dessert really hits the spot!

I saw this recipe on a Martha Stewart show many, many moons ago. Please don't ask me why I was watching it. I'm not a fan of Martha, and I never intentionally watch her show, but the pudding cake caught my eye while channel surfing. Well, anyone can get my attention if these words are spoken... warm, chocolate, pudding, cake.