When I was 23 years old, I (still) worked in an ice cream parlor. Every ambitious college graduate’s dream job! I’ve always been driven and career-minded like that. Well, that spring, there was a cute boy who worked a few blocks away. I developed a fierce crush on him, and stalked him for a while. Then we started to become friends, and he’d visit me from time to time in the ice cream parlor. He’d order a cone with one scoop of chocolate chocolate chip and one scoop of cherry vanilla. I developed a method of wrapping the chocolate chocolate chip around the cherry vanilla! Like a chocolate covered cherry! (No wonder I stayed at the ice cream parlor, right? A person can’t just throw away a prodigious talent like this one). He must have been very impressed, because we eventually got married with each other, as the children say. I’m not still working at the ice cream parlor (it’s not there any more!) but I am still working in the medium of chocolate covered cherries. This cake is dense and rich. It’s got black pepper and ginger in it, for a bit of bite, cassis, because I love cassis, and chocolate covered cherries! The kind of dry tart cherry they sell in the bulk food section of my grocery store. And then it’s got melted chocolate on top so that it doesn’t just look like any old plate of brownies, for heaven’s sake!

Here’s Bob Marley’s Mellow Mood. Love SWEET love, darling. Sweet as chocolate covered cherries.

1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips
1 stick butter
1 cup sugar
1 t vanilla
1 T cassis
2 T raspberry or blackberry jam (or any fruit jam, really!)
2 eggs separated, whites whipped till stiff
2/3 cup flour
1 T dark cocoa
1/2 t salt
1/2 t baking powder
1 t ground black pepper
1/2 t. ginger
1 cup chocolate covered dried cherries

for the ganache – 1/2 cup chocolate chips
1 t vanilla
1 T cassis
1 T milk

Preheat the oven to 350 and line, grease and flour a cake pan.

In a small sauce pan, melt the butter. When it starts to get bubbly, take it off the heat and stir in the chocolate chips (one cup of them). As they melt, stir in the sugar, vanilla, cassis and jam.

Put this mixture into a big bowl. Beat in the egg yolks.

Add all of the dry ingredients and mix well. Stir in the chocolate covered cherries.

Pour the batter into your prepared pan and cook for 30 – 40 minutes, till it’s pulling away from the edges and firm to the touch. Let it cool completely, then turn it upside down on a plate.

Melt the chocolate in a small saucepan in a larger saucepan with boiling water in it. As it melts, stir in the milk, vanilla and cassis. When it’s all melted, pour it over the cake and spread it. Keep it nice and smooth, or make pretty patterns in it with a knife. You can eat it like this, or let it set and then have at it.