Warm Rocky Road Cake

Isabella turns sixteen on October 22. Sweet sixteen. Except Isabella doesn't want a party — she wants a book. Specifically, she wants a copy of "Textbook of Neonatal Nursing" which costs forty-five dollars and which she has been eyeing at the UTEP bookstore for months. I bought it. I also bought her a cake, because even teenagers who want textbooks deserve cake, and the cake was chocolate (Isabella's choice, the opposite of Luis Jr.'s chocolate — Isabella likes dark chocolate, seventy percent, the serious kind, because Isabella likes everything serious).

She is sixteen and she is studying neonatal nursing from a textbook she received for her birthday and she is happy, genuinely happy, the quiet Isabella happiness that manifests as focus rather than smiles. She sat at the kitchen table with the textbook open and a cup of my caldo beside her and she read for three hours and I watched her from the kitchen and thought: Rosa. Rosa would have loved this. Rosa, who never went to high school, whose daughter (me) went to secundaria, whose granddaughter is reading college-level nursing textbooks at sixteen. Three generations. Each one reaching further. The reaching is the thing.

Luis Jr. came for Sunday dinner in uniform this week — he had duty and couldn't change. He sat at the table in his fatigues and ate Isabella's birthday enchiladas and the contrast — the soldier and the student, the uniform and the textbook, the two oldest children choosing such different paths — was the kind of image that would have made Rosa cry and laugh at the same time, because Rosa cried and laughed at the same things, which were always the things that proved her children had choices she didn't.

I made mole negro for Isabella's birthday dinner — the Oaxacan black mole, the darkest and most complex of all the moles, made with blackened chiles, chocolate, banana, and more than twenty other ingredients. It took me six hours. Isabella said it was "molecularly interesting," which is the most Isabella compliment I have ever received, and it is going on my tombstone: Here lies Maria Elena. Her mole was molecularly interesting.

Isabella would probably tell you that chocolate contains theobromine and phenylethylamine and that the dark variety has a higher flavonoid concentration than milk chocolate, and she would be right, because she is always right, especially about things she has read in a book. But I know something she doesn’t yet know, which is that chocolate in this family is not chemistry — it is memory, it is Rosa, it is six hours of mole negro and a birthday cake that has to be chocolate or it isn’t really a birthday. When the mole was done and the enchiladas were eaten and Isabella had gone back to her textbook, I still had chocolate on my hands and warmth in the oven, so I made this: a Warm Rocky Road Cake that is gooey and loud and the opposite of serious, for a girl who is very serious, because sometimes the food you make for someone is the thing you want to say to them that you don’t have the words for.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 35 min | Total Time: 55 min | Servings: 12

Ingredients

1 box (15.25 oz) chocolate fudge cake mix
3 large eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup water
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, divided
1 1/2 cups mini marshmallows
3/4 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
1/2 cup hot fudge sauce, warmed, for drizzling
1 tablespoon powdered sugar, for dusting (optional)

Instructions

Preheat. Heat your oven to 350°F. Grease a 9x13-inch baking pan with cooking spray and set aside.
Mix the batter. In a large bowl, combine the cake mix, eggs, oil, and water. Beat with a hand mixer on medium speed for 2 minutes until smooth. Fold in 1/2 cup of the chocolate chips.
Bake. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and spread evenly. Bake for 28–30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with just a few moist crumbs.
Add the toppings. Remove the cake from the oven. Immediately scatter the mini marshmallows, remaining 1/2 cup chocolate chips, and chopped nuts evenly over the hot surface.
Return to oven. Put the pan back in the oven for 4–5 minutes, just until the marshmallows are puffed and lightly golden and the chocolate chips are melted.
Finish and serve. Remove from oven and drizzle the warm hot fudge sauce over the top. Dust lightly with powdered sugar if desired. Serve warm, scooped directly from the pan.

Nutrition (per serving)

Warm Rocky Road Cake — The Chocolate That Runs in Our Blood