For the love of chocolate

It's not just a balm during fascism. It may also stave off dementia & reduce the risks of type 2 diabetes & heart disease. Aleksandra Crapanzano, author of Chocolat, has the receipts and the recipes.

Aleksandra Crapanzano’s new book, Chocolat.

I don’t know about you, but lately I find that leaning into tiny moments of joy has been one of my main coping mechanisms for surviving both fascism and its evil twin: staying informed about fascism. Both of which feel not unlike undergoing root canal without novocaine. Daily.

Sometimes this joy looks like a walk in the park. Other times it’s a hand in the dark or anything starring Meryl Streep. When all else fails, I can achieve peak joy simply by ripping off a square of dark chocolate and letting it melt in my mouth.

This chocolate-as-medicine program began many years ago, when I was sent on an assignment to take a meditation class and write about how it felt. How did it feel? Mostly as if I were a shitty meditator with a squirrel brain I can never turn off. But one moment, at the end of class, was memorable enough that I still think of it to this day. Our teacher gave us each a small disc of dark chocolate, which she admonished us not to bite or chew. Rather, she wanted us all to sit in silence while the chocolate slowly melted in our mouths.

This don’t-bite-the-chocolate moment of zen was, for me, revelatory. Suddenly, my endlessly chattering brain shut down for a full two minutes as I focused solely on the taste of that chocolate on my tongue: a treat which I still viewed, back then, as unhealthy and decadent but still worth it for the sheer joy and be-here-now presence it provided.

Today, however, scientists and other health researchers are starting to understand chocolate—particularly flavanol-rich dark chocolate—as an anti-inflammatory that may be neuroprotective against cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s. It has also been shown to offer other moderate but statistically interesting health benefits to the heart, blood vessels, glucose levels, and blood pressure. “The consumption of cocoa,” concluded the aforelinked¹ report, “showed protective effects on major cardiometabolic risk markers that have a clinical impact in terms of cardiovascular risk reduction.”

(Oh, how I wish I could go back in time and tell my seven-year-old self that her seemingly absurd dream of wanting chocolate to be good for her would one day actually come true!)

Another data point: in 2019, I interviewed Dr. Lisa Mosconi for my then job at an Alzheimer’s prevention start-up. Soon thereafter, I volunteered to join Mosconi’s clinical trial, which Maria Shriver subsequently covered on the Today Show. I also eventually covered Mosconi’s work on the link between estrogen loss in menopause and Alzheimer’s in The Atlantic.

So what did this brilliant neurologist and author of Brain Food—with a long family history of Alzheimer’s, who has dedicated her entire life to figuring out how not to get it herself—have on her desk as a brain-healthy snack? A bar of 70% dark chocolate, from which she was periodically nibbling during our interview. (And yes, for longtime readers of this publication who might recognize a theme, this was totally coincidentally years before I met my partner and his wife, who lives with early onset Alzheimer’s.)

Combine all of this information about the anti-inflammatory benefits of chocolate on cognitive and heart health with studies about how women in menopause need to be eating more protein, and I decided I needed to find a recipe that would use unsweetened cocoa powder in a protein-rich dessert that I could easily whip up on a random Tuesday night along with dinner. Because while my menopausal waistline might be expanding as I type this, I absolutely refuse to give up on the small but significant joys of savoring a delicious dessert during a dictatorship.

Enter Aleksandra Crapanzano’s new book, Chocolat. Specifically, enter pages 54 and 55, which she has generously allowed me to reprint below for paid subscribers, as they contain a chocolate yogurt cake recipe so healthy, so easy to bake, that making it is part of the national curriculum for kindergartners in France! The main ingredients are protein-and-brain-forward: plain Greek yogurt and a bunch of eggs, plus a generous dollop of unsweetened cocoa powder. I made mine with whole wheat flour instead of white flour, as the recipe calls for, as I’m trying to avoid over-processed everything, and the cake came out great! I actually doubled the recipe and made two loaves, which I highly recommend. The second one stayed perfectly fresh in the fridge while we devoured the first in two days flat.

I mean, come on. Who wouldn’t want to eat this brain-healthy chocolate snack? ©Deborah Copaken

I asked Aleksandra to take time out of her buzzy pre-publication schedule—Chocolat comes out next week—to chat with me over zoom. And yes, this is the same Aleksandra who helped me bake a clafoutis three years ago, back when I was just getting started with this publication and had three subscribers. One of whom was my mother.

Meanwhile, if you want to make Aleksandra’s delicious chocolate yogurt cake, see below for the easy instructions. I’m thinking of making my next ones with either raspberries or blueberries (or both?) baked inside them. If you end up baking this cake or changing it in any way, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.