Second-stab Saturday: Pepper cake is so much better with chocolate chips

Today on Second-Stab Saturdays, we present what we made to justify our friends driving out to try our sad run-in with the inbred ancestor of gingerbread!

Chocolate Chip bars 3 eggs 1½ c sugar 1½ c flour Almond extract 12 oz chocolate chips (semisweet or milk chocolate, whichever you like) Heat oven to 325°. Grease and flour a 9"x13" pan*. Beat eggs and sugar until thoroughly mixed. Stir in almond extract. Mix in flour gently but thoroughly. Stir in chocolate chips. Spread into the pan. Bake 30-45 minutes, until slightly golden on top (it'll probably be paler than you think it should be) and when a knife/toothpick/whatever comes out with no melted batter on it. Cut them while very hot. *These really want to stick to the pan, so you'll want to take the extra step of flouring it before putting the dough in. -Adapted from the Woman's Club of Ft. Worth Cook Book, 1928 (submitter: Mrs. Henry King)

As some of you may know, we tried a pepper cake a while ago which seemed like it really wanted to be chocolate chip cookies. It was good, but seemed like it wanted to be made with chocolate chips.

Jumbo chocolate chips.

Having run out of vanilla, a generous allotment of almond extract was used. It was so worth it. However, due to the 9x13 pan being occupied with the unbearable sadness of culinary Tudor travesties, it went in the skillet this time.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy...

And the results? Well, I did overbake it a bit. Thrown off by the lack of color on top, I accidentally let it get a bit hardened in the oven. And yet, this is how much was left:

Kelly chiselled these out of the pan and took them home.

So, to repeat, the gingerbread was so bad that six people left this much in the pan:

And this was so good that even the crumbs were wrapped up and taken home. The hardened edge pieces were so tasty I could have passed them off as chocolate chip biscotti. This is amazing. Plus, skipping out on beating the eggs beforehand made this easier, faster, and I didn't have to wash a second bowl.  Today's second stab is a total success!