NATIONAL CHOCOLATE CAKE DAY - January 27th

It’s January 2023, and everyone is setting goals or making resolutions for the new year. 

I have decided to make just one: to try to eat less sweets. I discovered—well, not just recently discovered—I’m addicted to sweets and especially chocolate. I love all kinds of chocolate: milk, dark, white, semi-sweet, bitter sweet. And I’m not fussy whether they are in eatable or drinkable forms. I like candy, cakes, cookies, chocolate covered pretzels, hot chocolate and chocolate syrups. 

Chocolate come from cacao trees. These trees are relatively short, only growing to be about 15-25 feet tall. It takes about 5 years for a cacao tree to grow mature and start producing cacao pods. The beans grow in football-shaped pods on the trunk of the tree and from larger branches.

Chocolate has been part of American society for about 252 years. In America, chocolate was consumed primarily as a beverage until the 1830s or 40s. Chocolate cakes, as we think of them today, did not exist.

Imagine my surprise when I found out January 27^th is National Chocolate Cake Day in the United States, a nonofficial holiday to commemorate this delicious treat. 

A popular Philadelphia cookbook author, Eliza Leslie, published the earliest chocolate cake recipe in 1847 in The Lady’s Receipt Book. The first boxed cake mix was created by a company called O. Duff and Sons in the late 1920s. Betty Crocker released their first dry cake mixes in 1947.

Since then, cake has its own category and is featured in recipes around the world. Who hasn’t heard of German chocolate or Black Forest cake? Chocolate fudge or molten lave cake? Texas sheet cake or chocolate truffle cake? There are even cakelike brownie recipes. 

Cocoa contains both healthy and unhealthy forms of dietary fat, and contains minerals important for human health, including potassium, phosphorus, copper, iron, zinc and magnesium. Some studies have found that regular chocolate consumption is associated with lower blood pressure, decreased stress levels, and increased alertness.   

And thus, because chocolate can be healthy was exactly why I modified my resolution not to give up all sweets, just to eat less of them. Hey, who am I kidding? A red box of deluxe chocolates sitting on my counter (a Christmas present from my son) is calling out to me this very moment. Maybe just a small piece wouldn’t hurt, would it?

Happy New Year! 

                             VISIT MY AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE FOR ALL MY BOOKS 

 

Ho, Ho, Ho! No Gifts - No Snow

If you don’t have all your shopping done yet, you better hurry. This year, since our children are grown, married, and far away, we’ve all decided to skip gift-giving and just buy for the one-year-old grandson in Alaska. When I mentioned the idea of not gift-giving this year, I could hear the collective sighs of my daughter-in-law and son in Texas and daughter-in-law and son in Alaska. Trying to purchase the perfect present for adults, and then having to ship them out is a nightmare. So we’ve all decided to Skype together as usual and see what each family bought our first grandchild.

Little Alaskan Harvey will be bringing in a haul this year. And to be honest, I had a fun-filled time searching and buying toys again. For the larger, more bulky ones, Amazon with its shipping was perfect. My son, Jeff, in Anchorage is receiving Harvey’s haul and wrapping them for us.

Although my husband, Scott, and I will be celebrating alone, we will do our usual enjoyable celebration of the holiday in Florida with NO SNOW. Instead of going out—and there are spectacular restaurants in New Smyrna Beach—we cook a full Christmas meal together. This year we’ll do our usual crab legs and crab cake Christmas Eve dinner with all the fixings. And on Christmas day, we’ve decided upon ham and all its complimentary dishes. And yes, I also bake cookies, if just half a batch of various kinds. The smell of chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven is one of the most glorious holiday smells I know.

What am I working on now? I’m working on a historical romantic mystery with a setting involving the early logging industry in the 1800s in Clearfield, Pennsylvania, when white pine was king of the forest. I pulled the manuscript back from my editor to try to rewrite and trim it a bit, so real edits will begin in January. The working title is called, “Willie, My Love.” The heroine, Wilhelmina Wydcliffe, is a feisty logger’s daughter, and the hero is a handsome, Chesapeake Bay sea captain named Jonathan Wain.

This year was a good one, even though there were some difficulties with health that had to be overcome. I hope the year ahead proves to be a splendid one—for us and our family, friends, neighbors, and associates.

Have a very Merry Christmas and a healthy and Happy New Year!  
May the sleigh bells ring, the children sing…and everything be merry and bright.