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.

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.

What do you get when you win a bet against a Hoosier fan? The answer is chocolate chunk oatmeal cookies, if you make the bet with Hungry Bear. My Penn State buddy, Jeff, made a bet with her on the Penn State vs. Indiana football game last month. Since Jeff lives in New York City, they agreed to wager on homemade cookies, which are easily shippable. Despite a valiant effort by the Hoosiers, the Nittany Lions narrowly came out on top and Hungry Bear was relegated to baking cookies! One batch for Jeff and another batch for us to enjoy.

We don't have a tried and true oatmeal cookie recipe, so Hungry Bear used a recipe from The New Best Recipe cookbook, which has our favorite chocolate chip cookies recipe. She followed the recipe with one minor change for the first batch. Instead of using semisweet chips, she used Scharffen Berger bittersweet chocolate chunks for a more rustic look and a richer chocolate taste. The second batch contained half bittersweet chunks and half butter toffee chunks from chopped Hershey's SKOR candy bars.

Hungry Bear and I love good old-fashioned chocolate cake. Nothing beats a moist, tender and airy piece of chocolate cake for dessert. The hard part is finding a recipe that has the right cake texture, chocolate flavor and sweetness level.

Last week, we were watching an episode of the Barefoot Contessa in which Ina Garten made a great looking chocolate cake. It looked so good, I had to give it a try. Hungry Bear's birthday was in a few days, so I decided to make it for her birthday.

The chocolate cake recipe produced a super moist cake due to all the liquids in the batter — 1 cup buttermilk, 1/2 cup vegetable oil, 1 cup hot coffee. With all the liquids, the batter was the runniest cake batter I've ever made. The frosting was a simple chocolate buttercream. Since we like intense chocolate flavors, I substituted bittersweet chocolate for the semisweet called for in the recipe and added an extra ounce of chocolate. And of course, I used Scharffen Berger chocolate and cocoa powder.