Suzanne Beecher

Dear Reader,

You are going to love this chocolate dessert.

It’s simple to make, I’m talking real easy, and people will think you must have spent hours preparing it. If you can only treat yourself to one homemade dessert the rest of this year, this would be the one. 

The little individual baking cups are slippery little dickens though, the first time I made them one of mine crashed on the floor. 

Suzanne's Lava Cakes
Yield: 6 cakes

Note from Suzanne....the cakes look very impressive, and they are super simple to make. I love them.

6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
10 tablespoons salted butter
1 teaspoon real vanilla
3 large eggs
3 large egg yolks
1 1/4 cups powdered sugar, sifted
1/2 cup all-purpose flour

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Butter six 3/4-cup ceramic ramekins.

Stir the chocolate and butter together in a medium saucepan over low heat. Stir in the vanilla. Cool the mixture slightly.

Whisk the eggs, yolks, and sugar together in a large bowl. Add the chocolate mixture and flour. Pour the mixture into the prepared dishes, dividing equally. Cover and chill them if you are making the lava cake a day in advance. 

Bake the cakes until the sides are set but the center remains soft, about 11 minutes. (If you have refrigerated the batter, you might have to bake them up to 15 minutes.) You really do want the center soft so that it is runny on the inside, so remove the cakes from the oven promptly--and don't second guess yourself.

Immediately, run a small knife around the edges to loosen the cakes. Put the cakes on plates and I like to serve them with vanilla ice cream.

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@firstlookbookclub.com

P. S. This week we're giving away 10 copies of the book Jackal: A Novel by Erin E. Adams. Click here to enter for your chance to win. 

(continued from Tuesday)

I don't have the ring anymore, but the work is a constant. Sometimes I wonder how he knew. I try to open the document but it refuses to load. A single bar of service flickers in and out. Great. I cling to my technology, like the rind of this place won't get on me if I'm shiny enough.

Moving into the aisle, I have to peel my dress pants off the backs of my thighs. I chose slacks over sweats because I feel powerful in a suit. In control. Every sweaty wrinkle threatens to break that illusion.

The train comes to a stop. What should have been an eight-hour journey became ten because of delays, and my body is sore and stiff. I turn my head to stretch my neck. A ligament pulls tight all the way down the center of my back, pinching right behind my heart. My eyes land on a red sign at the top of the open train door.

Exit.

My suitcase is above my head. One good pull and I can roll off this train. Or I could stay? Ride on to Pittsburgh. Take a flight back to New York.

My phone rings.

Melissa Parker.

How does she always know exactly when to call? I answer it.

"You're here!" she says.

I glance across the car, half expecting her to pop out from one of the empty seats. "How do you-I've been delayed for-Are you tracking my trip?"

"Someone won't stop asking when you're going to get here." Mel is more than enough reason to come home. Her daughter, my goddaughter, Caroline, is another.

I lift my bag into the aisle, but I don't leave the train just yet. A few passengers slide by me.

"Last call for Johnstown!"

I look back at my seat. Seats. Plural. I paid for both of them back in January when Mel called me and said, "I'm getting married." No hello. No how are you. No delighted scream. No girlish cheering. Mel started the call with a statement. She ended it with a date. That's how I knew she was serious. I bought tickets. The details would come later. She'd made a New Year's resolution to live in the "present." After more than ten years of living with her boyfriend, Garrett Washington, Melissa Parker was going to take his last name. Then, I had been all too eager to attend because I was finally who I imagined myself to be: Successful. Great job. Great fiancé. I'd become a New Yorker who had plans to move to Connecticut in three years.

"How does it feel to be home?" Mel asks.

"My home is dead." The phone is warm on my ear by the time this unprompted observation spills out of me.

"Liz," she replies. "Stop being so damn dramatic. It's one weekend."

"Fine."

Let it be known, I buried this place. When I look at a map of the United States, my eyes drift over all 309 miles of a state that isn't quite the heartland or the coast. As I stand in this Appalachian intercostal of America, I find myself in a liminal expanse. A cruel riddle.

"Can I get a weekend for my wedding?"

I see the conductor waving at me. This is it. Last chance, Liz.

I knew Melissa Parker was a good person when she shielded me from spitballs in the cafeteria in middle school. I'd stumbled into some quintessential '90s bullying. My sin? Being the only Black kid who wasn't "Black." One of three in my entire school, I was the one who didn't fit in. I didn't sound like them or listen to rap or have any rhythm. To my white classmates, these were compulsory to the definition, leaving me at the mercy of this shameful smattering of stereotypes. Cue the spitballs. The other Black kids were no help. I don't blame them; they were swimming for their own social lives and I was tainted water. Branded an Oreo, through and through. Whiteness influenced my speech, mannerisms, and pop-culture preferences. Mel and I hadn't said more than a few words to each other before then, but when she saw my matching lunch of a soft pretzel and fries, she knew we were meant to be. That's what she says. We both know it was because she herself was a white girl who didn't fit in. She wasn't rich, her blond wasn't from a box, and she wasn't interested in power over kindness.

"You get exactly forty-eight hours," I say before yelling to the conductor, "Wait!" A quick hoist of my bag, a sprint down the aisle, and I'm off the train. It lets out directly onto the tracks. "My God, this place is remote," I say to Mel.

"That's just the station."

The train pulls away. The landscape mounts. The flat coast is a distant memory now. Eastern hemlock trees crowd in, bringing darkness with their density despite the dwindling daylight. I'm in the wild. Breathe. I name the things around me:

Phone. Gravel. Trees.

"Garrett just sent me a picture of the view at the venue. It's stunning," Mel says. I can hear the tinny sound of her mixing something in her kitchen. Baking. Probably her cake. Mel got the idea to get married in January. She only seriously started planning two months ago. This ceremony is the definition of haphazard, last-minute, and thrown together with a hope and a prayer.

"Glad you finally decided on a place the day before the ceremony," I tease. "Where is it?"

"We're using Nick's place?" The upward inflection is there to make sure I'm okay. I'm not the biggest fan of her brother, Nick.

"Like, his house?"

"His land," she clarifies. "It's picturesque?"

Saliva pushes past the wine on my tongue. I don't reply. I'm not gonna say it until she does.

"It's . . . the woods. We're in the woods, okay?" This double insistence tells me all I need to know. "Elizabeth Rocher. Please tell me you're gonna be cool."

(continued on Thursday)

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