This time of year can be a real sweet overload. Even for people like me who are fans of savory over sweet, it’s hard to resist a little nibble of sugarplums and Christmas cookies.

Which is why when Dad got a slice of chocolate cake with fudge icing at a restaurant lunch last week, I decided to sample a little bite. It was good. But I was trying to be good, too, and not eat any more of his cake. So as we finished our wine (and he finished the last bite of cake) I looked down at my fork and saw a little fudge icing on the tip. Hmmmmm.

I picked it up and licked it off. But I licked too far down the tines and wound up with a bit of mashed potatoes and cream gravy along with the chocolate icing in my mouth. And wow, was it awesome.

“Good Lord!” I cried. “I’ve discovered an incredible flavor.”

“It’s chocolate gravy,” Dad said, bemused.

Excuse me?

“Chocolate biscuits and gravy are a big thing in the South,” Dad said with a smirk that conveyed the rest of his thought: "And you call yourself a foodie?"

“Your stepmother and I saw it on a menu at a diner in Kentucky,” he added.

“Did you try it?”

“Oh, hell no. It sounds terrible and Norma thought it was disgusting, like that chocolate sauce you eat on chicken.”

(An aside here: My lovely late step mom, Norma, was visiting in Houston with Dad years ago, and we went for a Tex-Mex fix to La Mexicana. Where, naturally, I had the chicken breast smothered in mole, nectar of the gods that the spicy chocolate sauce is. I tried to get her to taste it, but, noooo. She was having none of that. Apparently some Yankees think chocolate only belongs in sweets.)

Anyway, I was intrigued. I love biscuits and gravy; I love, love mole, so why hadn’t I heard of this dish before?

Turns out I missed that episode of Paula Deen. And Lisa Fain’s Homesick Texan blog post from last year and everything else out there on the Internet about biscuits and chocolate gravy. So OK, I found a simple recipe and tried it. Basically it’s just flour, cocoa powder, sugar, butter and milk. Here’s a chocolate gravy recipe from allrecipes.com:

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter
4 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup white sugar
2 cups milk

Directions

Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add cocoa and flour; stir until a thick paste is formed. Stir in sugar and milk. Cook, stirring constantly, until thick.

I cut the ingredients in half, since I made it for just Dad and myself, and we still had some gravy leftover. Oh, and I wimped out and used Pillsbury buttermilk biscuits. Just plop ‘em on a cookie sheet and put ‘em in the oven for 10 minutes — which, conveniently, is just about the time it takes to cook the gravy over medium heat. You do have to keep stirring it (I always stir gravy with a whisk instead of a spoon) until it’s about the consistency of pudding.

This was actually the simplest dish I’ve made in ages. And it was delicious. Chocolate gravy is nothing like mole, there’s no spicy kick to it, only a sweet and chocolately thickness spooned over hot biscuits. Think of chocolate bread pudding.

Dad even ate and enjoyed it!

It’s not something I would want to eat every day, but for a special breakfast, say for Christmas Day, this is a quick and easy little feast that would delight youngsters and even adults with a sweet tooth.

Some recipes for chocolate gravy include cinnamon and vanilla, but just the basic roux and cocoa powder seemed to work fine. However if I make this for Christmas morn, I may tinker with the recipe and see what I come up with. And, of course, I’ll serve it with something to cut the sweetness a bit, say maybe some bacon. Because even chocolate is better with bacon.