But none of these would be possible if it weren’t for Casparus van Houten, the Dutchman who roasted and pressed, pounded and crushed the lowly cocoa bean. People may have started grinding cocoa beans as early as 1764, but until 1828, when van Houten patented a machine that pressed the beans, we didn’t have cocoa butter, the precursor to modern-day chocolate.

Cocoa butter was a game changer!

 

The first verifiable chocolate cake recipe, published in Eliza Leslie’s 1847 cookbook, instructed bakers to insert bits of chopped chocolate into sponge cake. A few generations later, Maria Parloa (1843-1909), America’s first celebrity chef, began adding cocoa powder to her cake batter. It wasn’t long before O. Duff & Sons were marketing ready-to-eat chocolate cakes, conveniently sold in boxes.

Since then, chocolate cake has captured the tastebuds and the imaginations of writers such as Virginia Woolf, who had a fondness for chocolate and often mentioned it in her letters; C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia) and his good friend, J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit and The Lord of the rings), both loved cake, accompanied by cups of tea; Raymond Carver made chocolate cake a central theme in his heart-rending story, “A Small Good Thing.”You can read Carver’s story here: https://www.classicshorts.com/stories/sgthing.html

But few writers did more to make chocolate cake a star than Roald Dahl, a self-avowed chocoholic. Who can forget the memorable scene in Matilda, where Bruce Bogtrotter, after pilfering a slice of Miss Trunchable’s chocolate cake, is forced to eat an entire cake himself?Watch the iconic scene from the movie Matilda here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i29SOEjUcDs

In addition to writing children’s literature, Dahl penned several cookbooks, including Roald Dahl’s Revolting Recipes, which has the recipe for the famous chocolate dessert. You can also access the recipe here: http://www.acakebakesinbrooklyn.com/2013/06/bruce-bogtrotters-cake.html

 

 

Reason Number Two for celebrating, besides paying homage to chocolate cake, at long last, our next release, Bohomenian(s) Today, Annotations, Anecdotes & Asides, is on press and scheduled to ship in February!

This version of Edward Cucuel’s memoir brings fin de siecle Paris to life—you’ll read firsthand accounts of going to cabarets that replicated heaven and hell; you’ll see the table where Voltaire sipped his coffee; you’ll learn the proper way to drink absinthe, and discover what exactly a steamer chair is. Learn more about this delightful book here: https://waywordbooks.com/edward-cucuel-and-rosemary-sandoval/