These 6 chocolate desserts are the solution to many of life’s problems

The Mexican-Chocolate ‘Situation’

By Leslie Brenner

A chocolate dessert is the answer to so many of life’s difficulties. Anxiety about Russian aggression in Ukraine. Pandemic ennui. How to put a delicious flourish on a Valentine’s Day dinner.

Here’s how six of our favorite chocolate treats can come richly to the rescue.

Chocolate Dynamite Cookies

It’s a snow day, school’s closed, you find yourself working at home, and the kids — who used to pray for such a situation — are despondent they can’t see their friends. Answer: Making a batch of these super-chocolately cookies is a great form of therapy.

From Roxana Jullapat’s wonderful Mother Grains cookbook, they pack a triple chocolate punch. Melted bittersweet chocolate chips and Dutch-process cocoa powder go into the dough, and they’re studded with more chocolate chips. Rye flour gives them whole-grain earthiness. They’re rich, melty and soft. Even small children will enjoy helping you roll the dough into balls and then baking.

Molten Chocolate Cake

Didn’t think anyone would want dessert, so you haven’t planned anything? This classic dessert — created in New York City in the 1980’s — can literally be on your table 30 minutes after you decide to make it, making you an instant kitchen hero. With soufflé-like lightness, it has a secret treasure of creamy chocolate inside.

Because it’s so elegant, simple and easy-to-execute, it also makes a dreamy end to a Valentine’s Day dinner.

Your Favorite Chocolate Mousse

You need a dessert that can be completely made ahead. And two of your guests is gluten-averse. And your oven’s on the fritz.

Your Favorite Chocolate Mousse is the answer. It’s creamy (though it’s dairy-free, except for the optional whipped cream dollop on top), luxuriously chocolatey and transporting. Why is it “your favorite”? Because you can customize it and make it your own by using anything from Cognac to orange liqueur to vanilla to coffee to flavor the mousse (the possibilities are literally endless). Then you can decorate it with shaved chocolate, cacao nibs, rose petals, a candied violet or multi-sprinkles — whatever you want!

Oh, and yes — this is also a fabulous flourish for a Valentine’s dinner, and you’ll have extras in the fridge as treats for the following days.

The Mexican-Chocolate ‘Situation’

This one — which celebrates chocolate’s ancestral home, Mexico — is great for all kinds of ennui. It’s also what we recommend if you participated in the Great Resignation and you’re trying to figure out what to do next: Make this dessert.

With a texture a bit like a cakey brownie, but with the moist richness of almond meal instead of flour, these treats also solve the “I don’t have the right pan” problem, as well as the gluten-free guest conundrum. (A panoply of problems this one solves!) You can make it in a round cake pan and cut into wedges, or a rectangular or square baking pan and cut into squares or bars. Flavored with cinnamon, ancho chile, vanilla and brandy — which, along with the almondy taste, makes them taste just like Mexican chocolate — they’re delicious as is, or topped with ice cream, or maybe cinnamon-flavored whipped cream.

Don’t have almond flour? That happened once when Cooks Without Borders’ designer Juliet Jacobson and I wanted to whip them up on the spur of the moment. We ground up whole almonds instead — and got a slightly more rustic texture, just as wonderful. Don’t have ancho chile powder? Use a pinch of cayenne instead, or skip the spice. Don’t have brandy? Double up on the vanilla. How did we get along so long without this?

World Peace 2.0 Cookies

For foreign affairs angst, a batch of World Peace 2.0 Cookies is the remedy. At once chewy like a brownie and sandy like a French sablé, these rich and buttery treats — flecked with cacao nibs, dried raspberries and melty chocolate — come from Dorie Greenspan’s latest cookbook, Baking with Dorie.

The Brazilian Chocolate Cake, before the top layer goes on

Brazilian Chocolate Cake

And honestly, there’s nothing the perfect chocolate cake can’t solve. Even the marital crime of having failed to conceive a dessert for your spouse’s birthday, or the parenting sin of desiring a birthday cake for your kid that you’ll feel is worth the calories as well. And of course it’s excellent for Valentine’s Day: Yes, it’s a whole cake, but a slice the day or two after, eaten with the fingers and enjoyed with a cup of coffee, makes February gloom taste awfully sweet.

Finishing the Brazilian Chocolate Cake