Cook Up Something Special With Your Lover

Increase the Heat!

If you can’t stand the heat, keep your lover out of the kitchen, but you won’t have half as much fun that way. Cooking is rapidly becoming a favorite hobby and kitchens are often the most important room in a home. If you want to spark up your love life, cook up some sweet and spicy treats with your lover.

Naked co-ed cookery might be a little overboard, but here are two perfectly simple recipes to do together. One is sizzlingly spicy and one decadently sweet.

Red Hot Mexican Dip

You need:

1 can refried beans
12 oz jar of high-quality spicy salsa (you can use red, green, or both, but make it chunky)
8 oz neufchatel or cream cheese, pinched into teaspoon-sized dollops
half pound shredded Mexican style cheese
fresh or pickled jalepenos, or both and hot sauce to taste
fresh finely-chopped cilantro, ground ancho pepper, freshly ground black pepper
Tortilla chips—organic and lightly salted are best

Preheat oven to 425 F. In an 8 or 9 inch square baking pan, layer the first two ingredients. Shake on as much hot sauce as you can handle. Pinch off blobs of cream cheese and arrange the dollops fairly close together on top of the salsa. Scatter jalapeno slices all over the cream cheese. Top that with the shredded cheese and sprinkle as liberally as you like with the seasonings. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the top is golden brown and bubbly. Plate generous portions with a side of chips to dip or crumble. Sour cream and guacamole are great accompaniments. This serves four, but leftovers keep well.

Sweet and Sexy Chocolate Mousse

You need:

1 box regular or sugar free instant chocolate pudding mix
1 ½ cups icy cold milk
½ c plain yogurt
small tub of frozen whipped topping, thawed
dark, semi sweet, rich, highest quality chocolate bar
high-grade cinnamon

Put the pudding powder in a deep, narrow mixing bowl and add the milk and yogurt. Beat by hand or with a mixer until it thickens. Chill for about a half hour. Now, add about three fourths of the whipped topping to the pudding mix. Fold in gently until the color is even and the texture is light and airy. Spoon into two to four parfait glasses (you decide how sweet you feel), crown with a bit more whipped topping and sprinkle liberally with the grated chocolate bar. Add a tiny touch of cinnamon. Feed it to each other.

These are my own recipes—I use them every single week and my husband is simply mad about them. He cooks with me. He even learned to make these all by himself, better than I do.