Secret Recipe: Chocolate Chaga Ammolite Crepe Cake!

New to foraging? Learn more about ethical and safe foraging (plus how to get started) here!

Standing on a mountain top gazing off into the distance of jagged peaks and rolling hills, it can be hard to wrap my head around the idea that this whole area was once part of the ocean.

How often do you think about what is below your feet? The grey basalt of a lava flow? The shimmers of gold or gems embedded in the earth? The layers of sediment and history that stretch down millenia right underneath you?

Fossils have always captivated me. Looking at the incredible detail of a perfectly-preserved ancient fern fills me with awe - how can such delicate features become so permanent?! Perhaps I’m a little biased in my enthusiasm, as both of my parents are geologists. Family road trips have always been filled with “hey kids, wake up and check out those lava tube structures!” In fact, on more than one occasion, I have heard my mother utter “stop the car, I smell fossils!” (Though what she meant by that was that she recognized the slightly sulfurous scent of the substrate they are often found in.) Her nose didn’t lie, though. We’d always find some kind of fossil to ogle over on those excursions.

Fossils are like little clues, hints at a landscape we can only dream about, relics of life that were wiped out long ago. It’s pretty profound to picture that all of the mountains and valleys I’ve explored were once buried under a primordial sea. How do we know that? Clues like ammolite.

Ammolite fossils are some of my favorites. They’re the fossilized shells of ancient mollusks, and the spiral form is a perfect fibonacci sequence, a structural code that seems to be built into our entire existence, from the swirl of a galaxy, to a hurricane blowing in, to seashells, just like these ones. Not only are ammolite fossils impressive in form, though. Many exhibit other wonders: crystals growing in the chambers of the fossil, or an opal-like iridescence that is known as the semi-precious gemstone ammonite.

Alberta was my home for several years, and my explorations of this province have deepened my feelings of awe about the landscapes I love so much already. From gazing at bright blue glacial lakes and picturing the slow but strong movement of sliding glaciers carving the earth’s surface like a knife through wood; to walking over sharp and bubbly black rocks (the sign of a much more violent explosion), I’ve been a captive audience to witness the deep history of the terrain. But it wasn’t until I came face-to-face with an ammolite specimen as big as a car tire that my imagination suddenly seemed to drop down into the earth. I literally gasped when I came across this earthen magic in a museum, admiring the intensity of the greens and reds that flashed across the surface, like the Aurora Borealis transcribed to the earth. I pictured the size that creature must have been, its glorious presence in an ancient ocean that receded long before the era of humans. It’s humbling to think that with every striated layer we sit on, little (or big!) magical clues are hidden to tell the story of this land from sea bottom to lava flow.

If you’d like to engage in a little earth magic yourself, start paying attention to the geology beneath your feet. Does standing on basalt make you feel different than standing on limestone? Can you picture the treasures below you, held safely by the earth? Can you feel the magic of those memories climb up your spine as you wander? You may notice that once you start paying attention, this little awareness exercise can teach you a lot about yourself.

As I walk through a birch grove in the Rockies, I’m still picturing the earth’s movements that came to form this particular little valley. Absentmindedly, I start staring at a black growth on one of the birches, comparing it in my mind to the lava flows and tubes I’ve explored in Craters of the Moon. Slowly, I become aware of my thought process and my mind translates that lava lump into what it really is: chaga, a medicinal mushroom that grows on birch trees.

Chaga has been used medicinally for centuries in many various ways, from improving immunity to slowing cancer growth. It’s truly a gift from the forest. Processing chaga is a bit like cutting open a fossil or a geode. Inside that blackened exterior is a surprisingly orange center that smells like root beer and woodland winters and all things exhilarating and magical. I love the flavor and fragrance of chaga purely for enjoyment. The medicinal benefits are an extra bonus.

So with ammonites and chaga floating around in my mind, I decided to bake a cake in honor of the awe that hit me on that special day. A crepe cake seemed like the perfect answer; with its many layers representing the many layers of silt and sediment deposited throughout the landscape over millennia (don’t worry though, the crepes take only the teensiest fraction of that time to be made, and taste far better than limestone.) The earthy freshness of chaga is infused into both the crepes and the fluffy ganache between them. My favorite part, though, must be the decoration, which is rooted in a little more nostalgia. My dad’s favorite birthday cake is German Chocolate, a chocolate cake topped generously with a caramel-like frosting filled with coconut and toasted pecans. This image popped into my eye as I studied a fossil and noticed just how similar that frosting looked to the interior cavities of the ammonite. Add a little tempered chocolate decoration and you’ll have a beautiful and sophisticated cake in honor of the earth and all of the magic it holds!

Find the rest of this post and the Secret Recipe over on Patreon.com/thewondersmith!

Huge thanks to my Patrons that make sharing all of these lovely posts with you possible (without all of the pop-ups and ads that make browsing other blogs so annoying). If you’re feeling generous, you too can support the wonder with a monthly contribution of your choice. Even $1 helps a lot! Your donation will help to fund this blog as well as my surprise free events and gifts for strangers. Learn more about this program at the link below:

Love what you’ve read here? Don’t forget to Subscribe to get frequent updates of new posts!