Serving Dessert for Two

A Valentine Sure to Make Chocolate Lovers Swoon Valentine’s day is the cruelest holiday. It comes just seven weeks after Christmas, when we’re still trying to keep our New Year’s resolution to lose December’s fresh tonnage. Then, just 14 days into February, here comes our significant other, bearing a big, fat box of chocolates. This is love? And if he brings flowers instead, then we’re unhappy that we don’t get at least a few kisses, the foil-wrapped kind. The only thing worse is not receiving anything at all. Instead of counting calories, we’re left measuring the hole in our heart. No wonder we’re seeing red.

And therein lies Cupid’s dilemma: Adults both loathe and love chocolate on Valentine’s Day. Those crunchy candy hearts sporting silly sayings are fine for puppy love. But adult love is deeper and more complex than mere sugar. Adult love is chocolate.

Two of my own momentous Valentine’s Days involved chocolate. On the first, the man I then considered to be my destiny arrived with a cellophane-wrapped box of drugstore nuts and chews. They were as stale and perfunctory as our relationship. We were through, though not soon enough. On the second, my new husband gave me an unassuming, heart-shaped red container--Cost Plus, not Faberge--packed full of the chocolate truffles he’d made. I knew then that I’d picked the right guy. To me, the best Valentine is both handmade, a token of what the future will hold, and a modest but meaningful amount of chocolate.

The Aztecs who invented the stuff considered chocolate an elixir of love, drinking it hot and bitter, flavored with pepper, chiles and honey. But then, they were also into human sacrifice. With sufficient sugar to charm the bitter cacao bean, the beverage became all the rage when Hernando Cortes brought it back to Spain. There, upper-crust women took to belting down cups of it during Sunday sermons. The French, with their fondness for raising the simplest pleasures to the realm of elaborate mystery (think cheese, perfume and pastry), considered chocolate a panacea, inventing chocolate purgatives, digestive aids and anti-inflammatories. Indeed, chocolate in 17th century France was thought ideal for everything but dental work. Louis XIV’s Spanish wife, Marie-Therese, lost her teeth to an uncontrollable passion for it. French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin spoke of the miracle of chocolate as a restorative and made his own ambergris-flavored recipe for “chocolate of the unhappy.”

Sumi Chang, owner of Euro Pane Bakery in Pasadena, has a better idea. She adds almond paste to cocoa powder, butter and eggs for a Valentine’s Day chocolate cake. Chang never experienced Valentine’s Day in her native Korea, but the former nurse who turned a love of baking into a second career likes celebrating it here. Her eyes light up and she breaks into an electric smile as she describes how the holiday leaves her jazzed and touched. Anyone who receives her cake will no doubt feel the same. The almond paste makes it moist and as irresistible as a first love; the cocoa makes it as dense and rich as lasting passion. Baked in a small, heart-shaped pan, it’s just right for two to share--without sinking anyone’s diet. Now that’s love.

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CHOCOLATE ALMOND CAKE WITH GLAZE

Makes 2 to 4 servings

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For cake:

3 ounces butter, softened

1/4 cup and 2 tablespoons sugar

4 ounces almond paste (preferably Swiss)

2 eggs

1/4 cup and 1 tablespoon cocoa powder (preferably Valrhona), sifted

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For glaze:

6 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate (preferably Valrhona)

4 ounces butter

1 tablespoon light corn syrup

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Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 7-inch-wide, 1 1/2-inch-deep heart-shaped baking pan. In mixer, whip butter and sugar for 2 minutes. Scrape sides of bowl and mix thoroughly. Add almond paste and mix until fluffy, 3 to 5 minutes. Add eggs and scrape sides of bowl. Mix for 2 more minutes. Add sifted cocoa powder and scrape sides of bowl. Mix for 2 more minutes. Pour batter into baking pan. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean. Remove cake from pan and place on plate. Let cake cool completely.

Combine glaze ingredients in small bowl and float in larger bowl of water warm enough (about 100 degrees) to melt chocolate and butter. Stir until glaze is thoroughly mixed. Pour half of glaze over center of cake and tilt cake to coat it evenly. Let glaze set 2 to 3 minutes, then pour remaining glaze over cake for smooth finish. Garnish as desired.

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Food stylist: Norman Stewart