Last year, we watched the Barefoot Contessa make chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter icing and thought it was a brilliant combination. We actually made them for dessert in our first post (scroll down) on the site. They were a big hit, so we made them again this past Sunday.

Although we loved Ina's union of chocolate and peanut butter, we thought her cupcake recipe had too many ingredients. I'm sure the cake part tastes great, but we would have bought sour cream and buttermilk, used half, and eventually thrown the rest away.

Instead, we turned to one of our favorite chocolate cupcake recipes by Gale Gand (BTW, her fudgy frosting is killer). We love the simplicity of the cupcake batter... no eggs, no butter, no mixer required.

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.

I never use nuts in my chocolate desserts. I wouldn't dare put them in our chewy chocolate chunk cookies or in our brownies. Call me nutty, but I like to keep our chocolate desserts pure and simple.

The one nut I'll make an exception for is the macadamia nut. I love the richness and creaminess of this nut. As I was flipping through some cookbooks, I stumbled upon Jamie Oliver's two-nuts chocolate torte recipe, which uses almonds and walnuts.

The recipe looked simple enough, so I used it with a few changes. The first modification was substituting macadamia nuts for the almonds and walnuts. When I walked to the local supermarket, the only macadamia nuts available were roasted and salted nuts. I figured it would be okay, since most cake recipes ask for around a teaspoon of salt. Since macadamia nuts are higher in fat content than almonds and walnuts, I cut the amount of butter. The final change was the addition of vanilla extract to enhance the chocolate flavor.

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.

Chocolate bouchons are amazing cork shaped brownies found at Thomas Keller's Bouchon Bakery in Napa and NYC. The recipe is also used to make the warm chocolate brownie served at Ad Hoc, which is our favorite dessert at any restaurant in the Bay Area country. Every time we go to Napa, we have to get a fix of bouchons from the bakery or the brownie at Ad Hoc. They are extremely addicting!

Our friend, Brennan, is a total bouchon junkie. When we bring back bouchons from Napa, we have to give the brownies to Deb, Brennan's wife. Otherwise, Brennan will eat them all and neglect to tell Deb about their existence. We accidentally outed him once... oops! We thought he'd share at least one.

A few weeks ago, I made bouchons for the first time and I turned it into a battle between Valrhona and Scharffen Berger chocolate. The recipe calls for Valrhona chocolate, but I also wanted to try bouchons using Scharffen Berger. It's our favorite local chocolate maker and we've been baking almost exclusively with Scharffen Berger for the last 5 or 6 years.