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I’ve never tried the Bars, but the Honey Clusters cereal is very, very good.

So last week I got a second copy of The Sweet Potato Queens Book of Love, which is funny, and has recipes in it that are southern, and so COMPLETELY BAD FOR YOU. I was leafing through it and I saw this one, for a thing simply called ‘Chocolate Stuff’ (it apparently is a pudding like thing, but no one ever asks the author for it by name, they just ask her to make ’some of that chocolate stuff’, and thus…)

This recipe is deceptively good. Like, you will make it, and you will say, ‘what the hell?’ because it is so good, and it’s so simple that my roommate said, ‘Man, that’s hardly even really baking.’ When this roommate first tried it, he actually had the, ‘eyes close, roll up, you moan ‘Oh, god” chocolate response, and I’ve never seen that from a straight man before. He and I ate half the pan in about 10 minutes after it came out of the oven.

• 2 eggs
• 1 cup of sugar
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1 stick of butter
• 2 heaping tablespoons cocoa (I really heaped them; it was prolly more like 3)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• nuts (optional)

Beat two eggs with a cup of sugar and a half cup of flour. I did this in my mixer to get it really well mixed and slightly fluffy. But not meringue fluffy. In the microwave I melted the butter with the cocoa, and then beat them with a fork until smooth. Dump the butter/cocoa into the egg/sugar/flour and then added the vanilla, and blended it some more. If you add nuts, you’d stir them in now (it’s a southern recipe, so they should be pecans).  Pour this into a loaf pan, then set loaf pan in a pan of water, and cook at 300 degrees for (according to the book) 40-50 minutes. I wound up going a little longer; the book describes it as having a slightly crunchy top, and at 50 minutes, it seemed a little soft yet, so I gave it 10 more minutes.

It’s sort of like a brownie, but imagine a brownie where every bite has both the crunchy edge bits and the gooey melty bits. Warm was good, it was even fabulous cold this morning; it retained both the soft gooey underside and the crunch, even covered overnight.