If you like to bake, as I do, and you like to eat, as I also do, you often get asked “What is your favorite dessert?” I rarely have an answer. Sometimes I feel like the cool creaminess of ice cream, and I’m more in a bread pudding mode. Sometimes the simple nostalgia of a chocolate chip cookie will do it for me, and other times I want something more elaborate, like a macaron. Asking a baker to name her favorite dessert is like asking a mother to name her favorite child. I’m not sure it can be done.

However, I’ve always had a soft spot for gingerbread — there’s something so wholesome and old-fashioned about it. The very notion of gingerbread evokes images of Little Women or Mary Poppins, and baking it fills the kitchen with mouthwatering aromas. Although I think gingerbread is excellent year round, there’s something about the holiday season that makes it especially appropriate. On the other hand, gingerbread is not what one would generally think of when contemplating a sinful, sticky, sweet and satisfying dessert. For that, you really need chocolate. But to combine the alluring dark sweetness of chocolate cake with the warmth and spice of gingerbread is to find dessert nirvana.

If this looks good to you, but you want to try it before making it yourself and you’re in the Los Angeles area, please consider stopping by the Eat My Blog Charity Bake Sale tomorrow, Saturday December 5, from 10-4, outside Zeke’s Barbecue on Santa Monica and La Brea in West Hollywood. I and several other Los Angeles area food bloggers are baking a whole litany of scrumptious goodies to sell — bacon maple fudge, caramel fleur de sel macarons, pumpkin swirl brownies — and this chocolate gingerbread will be my featured contribution. All proceeds from the sale will go to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, so you’re feeding more than one hungry person with your purchase.

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