Chocolate Pasta v.1

Ohmygoodness.

Once in a while, an idea comes along that seems weird, but potentially awesome. When I found a link to this recipe on Pinterest, I could not help but feel intrigued. It is so unlike anything we've ever had and the lady who wrote the post based it off something she ate, and loved, in Tuscany. That sounded like a winner so following her suggestion we jumped on the bandwagon (ok, so it's not that popular) and tried it.

At first, I had an issue with her recipe. My typical pasta dough uses 2.5 cups of flour (measured after sifting), 1 tsp. salt, 4 eggs (with water added if needed to equal 7/8 cup), and about a tsp. of water. Her recipe used 2.5 cups of flour measured without sifting (which is probably a full cup extra sifted flour), 3/4 cup cocoa, and 3 eggs. It seemed like a very small amount of liquid for that amount of dry ingredients, and I couldn't get a dough to form until I added an additional egg and about 4 tbsp. water. That worked, and I ended up with a nice malleable pasta dough.

I balled it up, dusted it in flour, and set to work.

At first the dough was being pretty finicky but after working it through the roller a few times it started to behave. It turned out to be a beautiful dough and easy to work with. {Don't mind the blurry photo, it's a challenge to roll pasta with one hand and photograph it with the other.}

Both the kids came in and said it smelled like brownies, to which I had to offer the disappointing fact that no, there were no treats to be had.

The dough cut beautifully. There is enough humidity here that my fresh pasta dough usually has to be fairly dry in order to not stick together horribly once cut, so I routinely dust it with flour, but this one did not stick at all and was seriously the most beautiful dough I've ever made.

Following the suggestion of the recipe author, we served it with a mild alfredo type sauce (without garlic or shallots) and extra cheese.

It was perhaps the most grotesque thing we have ever eaten. Ellie, who is predisposed to like anything that is edible, initially hollered "let's put it in the book!" meaning save it for our family cookbook that we compile of our most loved recipes. After a few more bites she was over that idea completely and voted with the rest of us to never, ever make this again.

In the thumbs up/thumbs down assessment you can see how well it fared. It was fun to try something new, but I've got to say I think I'm going to end up eating a PB&J later tonight. Since we can't even remember the last time we had a dinner failure I'd say it was a worthy adventure; just not one worthy of repetition.