It's the time of year for giving, so we're participating in the 5th annual Menu for Hope charity raffle, which brings together food bloggers from around the world in the fight against hunger. Bloggers offer prizes that you can win by purchasing a $10 raffle ticket. The proceeds of the charity raffle goes to the U.N. World Food Program (WFP).

Last year, we gave away an iPhone. This year we want to share our love of a Bay Area product, Scharffen Berger chocolate. Many of you know that we love to eat and bake with Scharffen Berger chocolate and we wrote about the factory tour previously. So our raffle prize this year is the following...

Scharffen Berger Gift Package

• A 5 pound bag of petit baking squares. The winner gets to choose between 62% semisweet, 70% bittersweet and 99% unsweetened chocolate.
• The Essence of Chocolate: Recipes for Baking and Cooking with Fine Chocolate cookbook by Robert Steinberg and John Scharffenberger
• A Scharffen Berger (extra) bitter t-shirt

Due to the weight and temperature concerns (we don't want your chocolate to melt), we're limiting shipping to the US only. The charity raffle runs from December 15th - 24th with raffle winners announced on January 12th.

The prize code for our Scharffen Berger gift package is UW24. Shipped within the US only.

How to Enter/Donation Instructions

1) Choose a prize(s). For a complete list of prizes offered worldwide, visit Chez Pim. For a list of prizes from West Coast food bloggers, visit MattBites.

2) Go to Firstgiving, the online fundraising company used to manage the Menu for Hope charity raffle, and make a donation.

3) Specify the prize you would like to bid for in the 'Personal Message' section of the donation form. Every $10 donated will get one raffle ticket toward a prize. For example, a donation of $50 gets 5 raffle tickets, which can be distributed between different prizes, such as 3 tickets for UW24 and 2 tickets for UW33. This would be entered as 3xUW24, 2xUW33.

4) If your company matches your charity donation, please check the box and fill in the information so the corporate match can be claimed.

5) Please check the box to allow us to see your email address so that Menu for Hope can contact you if you win. Your email address will not be shared with anyone.

Please spread the word to your friends and family to help in the fight against hunger! Let me know if you have any questions and thanks in advance for your generosity.

[tags]charity, menu for hope, raffle, un, world food program, chocolate, scharffen berger[/tags]

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.

It's been way too long since our last post. Over the last month, I've been distracted by foodgawker, the election (I'm supporting "that one") and Penn State Football. I've spent entirely too much time in front of the computer, mostly with foodgawker, making it hard to crank out a post. We've been cooking regularly, but I've been too tired/lazy to pull out the camera and tripod to document our meals.

Hungry Bear has constantly reminded me that I'm neglecting SND. To appease her and some of our loyal readers (I hope you are still out there), we present to you look-we-still-love-you-and-SND everything cookies. As someone who loves to eat anything and everything, this cookie has it all... chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, raisins, nuts, granola and rolled oats.

It's a great recipe that Hungry Bear got from a friend over a decade ago. As the name implies, the cookie has everything you'd want... soft, crunchy, chewy, chocolaty, fruity and peanut buttery. I like to think that they're sort of healthy with the low-fat granola and rolled oats. It lessens the guilt after you inhale half a dozen cookies in five minutes!

Hungry Bear and I recently discovered chocolate oatmeal courtesy of Jeff, one of my closest friends and Penn State buddy. He came out to visit us a few weeks ago to rest, relax, cook, eat and ride (road biking). Jeff actually prepared a few meals for us while he was here. You've gotta love a house guest who will cook for you!

One morning after running the Lyon Street Steps, Hungry Bear made some steel cut oats and Jeff turned it into chocolate oatmeal by adding a little Scharffen Berger sweetened cocoa powder. It was delicious! And I can't believe that we didn't think about this combination ourselves. We typically have our oatmeal with some sliced bananas and brown sugar, which is good, but not as brilliant as chocolate oatmeal!

So the next time you want a healthy breakfast, reach for the steel cut oats and a little cocoa powder. Thanks Jeff!

[tags]oatmeal, steel cut oats, cocoa powder, chocolate, bananas, brown sugar, easy[/tags]

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!

[tags]chocolate, bittersweet, valrhona, pudding, icing, cake[/tags]