Just in time for Valentine’s Day here’s a decadent chocolate dessert from Ellen Easton. And what better way to say I love you than baking a chocolate heart.

Dark Chocolate Chip Brownie Cake

Ingredients:

• 2-OZ. of unsweetened baking chocolate
• 1 stick of unsalted butter
• 1 cup of granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of Nielsen Massey Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup all -purpose flour and 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1-cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Optional Toppings: Shredded Coconut, Shaved Chocolate, Chopped Walnuts

Directions:

In a double boiler or in a bowl set over a pan of hot water, melt the chocolate and set aside to cool. In a mixing bowl, mix butter and sugar together until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time to creamed mixture. Add Vanilla extract. In a separate bowl or on wax paper sift flour with salt. Add melted chocolate to egg mixture. Fold in flour and chocolate chips.

Prepare an 8-inchround or square baking pan with PAM™ baking spray and dust the bottom and sides with Domino Brownulated Sugar. Place the mixture into the pan. Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Place pan in the oven and bake for 20 minutes or until an inserted toothpick is clean. Remove from oven. Allow to completely cool. Remove from pan. Ice. Add toppings. Makes one layer. For a two-layer cake double the recipe and use two separate pans for baking. Ice in-between the layers and the top. Serves 8-10. Mini pans may also be used but check time at 15 minutes.

GANACHE ICING: 1 cups Confectionery Sugar, 1/4 cup Droste Dutch Chocolate, 1 TBS. Vanilla Extract and 2 TBS water. Mix all ingredients together until blended. Add extra water one teaspoon at a time to thin, if needed. Double the recipe for a two-layer cake.

Text and Photo ©Ellen Easton- All Rights Reserved

Ellen Easton, author of Afternoon Tea~Tips, Terms and Traditions(RED WAGON PRESS), an afternoon tea authority, lifestyle and etiquette industry leader, keynote speaker and product spokesperson, is a hospitality, design, and retail consultant whose clients have included the Waldorf=Astoria, the Plaza and Bergdorf Goodman. Easton’s family traces their tea roots to the early 1800s, when ancestors first introduced tea plants from India and China to the Colony of Ceylon, thus building one of the largest and best cultivated teas estates on the island.