CHOCOLATE STUFF

Recipe Notes: The Sweet Potato Queens' Big-Ass Cookbook (and Financial Planner) is a great read! The recipes are so intentionally unhealthy that I have trouble bringing myself to make almost all of them (Chocolate Stuff is the exception), but the anecdotes are so hilarious that I would recommend them to anyone. This recipe yields a gooey, rich chocolate concoction that's not to be missed! Note: if the format of this recipe looks funny, it's because I've provided it here exactly how Jill Connor Browne, the Boss of the Sweet Potato Queens, presented it in her book.

Preparation Time: About one hour

Quantity: One loaf-sized batch of gooey goodness

Source: The Sweet Potato Queens' Big-Ass Cookbook (and Financial Planner)

Instructions:

"Beat 2 eggs with a cup of sugar and a half-cup of flour. Add a teaspoon of salt. In the microwave, melt together 1 stick of real butter (I never use unsalted; I think it tastes flat) and 2 fairly heaping tablespoons of Hershey's cocoa. Just get regular old Hershey's in the brown box--anything else is different and will screw it up. Dump the butter-cocoa mixture into the other stuff and stir it up real good. Then add 1 running-over teaspoon of vanilla. I use the real stuff, but the grocery-store kind will not ruin it. Stir that up. Decide on nuts/no nuts. If you go for them, use about 1 cup of chopped pecans. Pour the stuff into a greased loaf pan and set the loaf pan in a pan of water and stick the whole deal in the oven at about 300 degrees. Depending on how your oven cooks, it needs to stay in there for about 40 to 50 minutes. You can reach in there and sort of tap on the top of it at 40 minutes. If it seems crunchy, I'd go on and take it out. You can't really undercook it, since it's good raw, but you don't want to overcook it and lose the gooey bottom part, which is a crucial factor in the whole texture experience."